The Attitudes of English Teachers Towards Developing Intercultural Communicative Competence

Abstract

Learning a foreign language is inseparably connected with some reflection on a foreign culture. There is no one consistent definition of a cultural component in foreign language education since the scope of the term culture is wide. Furthermore, there are various teaching traditions depending on a language, which is reflected in highlighting different aspects of culture that are being taught in an L2 classroom. In the present chapter a distinction is made between the role of culture in a communicative approach and intercultural approach in which an emphasis is put on similarities and differences between native and target language culture. The primary objective of the research was to examine the attitudes of 16 secondary school English teachers towards intercultural component (IC) in foreign language education. The respondents expressed their opinions on the aims of intercultural education, their intercultural competence, necessity of IC introduction in L2 classroom, motivation of their students to IC. The subjects also evaluated the IC teaching materials available for English teaching.