What is the place of culture in English classes? EFL instructors’ opinions and practices

Date

2019-05-09

Author

Gürbüz, Nurdan
Taşdemir, Hanife

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Culture, a commonly visited concept in English language teaching research, has been integral to language classes. There is a broad range of issues to consider such as which cultural information to teach or how to teach it, which influence classroom practices. The present study investigated the place of culture for ten English language instructors teaching at tertiary level across state and private universities in Turkey. The findings revealed that the EFL instructors’ opportunities to raise their cultural knowledge were not satisfactory, and there was a mismatch between their wishes and practices. This mismatch was mainly attributed to learners’ lack of motivation/interest and their opportunities for visits abroad. Language learning was viewed as a way of learning about different cultures. The findings also indicated that the participants’ conceptualization of culture in English language classes was predominantly modern, i.e. either as part of the humanistic (big C) or sociolinguistic (little c) paradigm.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/88329

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