Foreign language teachers’ perspectives on intercultural communication skills in Turkey

Intercultural communication skills

Abstract

This study examined the perceptions of foreign language teachers in Turkey regarding their role as conveyers of culture in foreign language teaching. To that end, I utilised a descriptive model, one of the quantitative research designs, in the research. The study group consisted of 441 English teachers working in the English preparatory programs of various universities in Turkey in 2020-2021 academic year. The survey focused on teachers' perceptions of their purposes in foreign language teaching, their views on culture teaching in the context of foreign language teaching, their cultural teaching practices, their familiarity with the country, culture, and individuals in which the language they teach, the time they allocate to culture and language teaching in their practices, and their views on the cultural content of the materials they use. The answers of the participants are summarized as arithmetic mean and standard deviation, frequency and percentage. I used one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) so as to determine whether the data on the participants differed significantly according to the variables and preferred Tukey, one of the post- hoc multiple comparison technique, to verify the source of the significant difference as a result of the ANOVA analysis. The results of the study showed that the teachers are aware of the importance of integrating the target culture in foreign language teaching. The majority of the participants pay attention to conveying the culture of the target language within the framework of the curriculum and materials they use. However, it was concluded that foreign language teachers in Turkey needed support programs and travels in order to increase their level of familiarity with the culture of the language they teach.