The Role of Intercultural Competence in Foreign Language Teaching

Abstract

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the cultural dimension of foreign language education, and teachers today are expected to promote the acquisition of intercultural competence in their learners. Thus, the present study aimed to investigate the opinions and attitudes of Iranian teachers of English on intercultural competence teaching and to see how and to what extent these opinions and attitudes are reflected in their classroom application data were selected from 50 EFL teachers by mean of questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of four parts that investigate the teachers' attitudes and opinions. Date for present study, which was descriptive. Two statistics were used, if so , one sample t-test can be used, otherwise the chi-square test can applicable. The result of one sample t-test revealed that language teachers seem to be aware of the role of the culture in foreign language education though they do not often integrate culture into their teaching in order to develop intercultural competence in their learners. In overall, Iranian EFL teachers had positive attitude toward teaching culture in the classroom.