چکیده:
With increasing intercultural communication among people from diverse linguistic and
cultural backgrounds, the integration of language and culture has recently been
foregrounded in language education. This has led to a growing need for studies on
intercultural communicative competence. To address this need, this study aimed to
afford an insight into the beliefs of 20 Iranian language teachers on intercultural
language teaching (ICLT). Based on a mixed-method design, two different instruments
were used to collect the data. First, an ICLT questionnaire which included 12 items was
administered to 20 teachers. This study also used semi-structured interviews to obtain
an in-depth understanding of the EFL teachers’ attitudes toward ICLT. The findings
from the questionnaire revealed that the teachers were favorably disposed toward ICLT
and thought that culture teaching is as important as language teaching. They believed
that language teachers are required to inform the learners of intercultural issues. Also,
the thematic content analysis of the interviews led to the discovery of four main themes,
namely definition of culture, ICLT and its significance, challenges in ICLT, and sources
used by the teachers to improve their intercultural knowledge. However, many teachers’
responses in the interviews indicated some degree of uncertainty regarding the concept
of ICLT, as they were not confident how to integrate language and culture or how to
deal with challenges in implementation of ICLT. These findings imply as the teachers’
perceptions would guide their practices in the classroom, more attention needs to be
devoted to the inclusion of ICLT-related topics in language teacher education courses
to equip the teachers with requisite skills and expertise._____________________________________________________________
خلاصه ماشینی:
Intercultural teaching in L2 classrooms: Exploring English language teachers’ beliefs Zia Tajeddin1 and Atefeh Rezanejad2 Received: 2019/1/2 Accepted: 2019/5/26 With increasing intercultural communication among people from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, the integration of language and culture has recently been foregrounded in language education.
57), language teachers are now considered to be accountable for teaching their students to “understand the world around them, to communicate across linguistic and cultural boundaries, and to play an active role at many levels in the world” (Kelly, Grenfell, Gallagher-Brett, Jones, Richards, & Hilmarsson-Dunn, 2002, p.
g. Andrews, 2003; Borg, 2003; Breen, Hird, Milton, Oliver, & Thwaite, 2001; Hayes, 2005; Johnston & Goettsch, 2000) has been conducted on the concept of teacher beliefs and pedagogical practices in second language education.
For instance, Zhou’s (2011) mixed-method study on 201 Chinese university EFL teachers showed that they enjoyed a high level of intercultural understanding and tried to develop cultural knowledge in the language learners.
Descriptive statistics of EFL teachers’ beliefs about the necessity of teaching culture (View the image of this page)* Note: F = Frequency, P = Percentage As depicted in the table, out of the 20 participants of the study, 12 teachers (60%) agreed that culture needs to be taught in the class.
J. Humanities (2018) Vol. 25 (3): (79-97) They thought that sometimes the students do not really understand what they teach regarding the cultures of different countries and this lack of understanding may lead to a decrease in the learners’ motivation to learn a new language.