Developing intercultural awareness in language teaching: Insights from EFL lecturers in Turkey

Abstract

This study aims to reveal EFL lecturers’ opinions about intercultural education and classroom practices including teaching materials, classroom activities, assessment, and teachers’ role for developing intercultural awareness. To gain insights about the current situation in EFL classrooms at a university level in Turkey, lecturers’ opinions and classroom practices have been examined through a questionnaire and an interview. This study, combining both quantitative and qualitative research, was designed according to the mixed method procedure and followed the sequential explanatory strategy. The study covered 172 EFL lecturers from preparatory schools of six state universities, and 12 EFL lecturers selected randomly joined the interview voluntarily. The participating institutions were Atatürk University, Cumhuriyet University, Erciyes University, Hacı Bektaş Veli University, Karabük University, and Karadeniz Technical University. The quantitative results show that although lecturers are aware of the importance of integrating both home and target culture into the classes, and developing learners’ interactional skills, intercultural communicative competence and intercultural sensitivity, they are not sure about how to put intercultural learning into practice for EFL classroom tasks and activities. Accordingly, the results of the interview present the problems that prevent teaching about intercultural awareness and reveal that lecturers need guidance and training to practice confidently intercultural competence teaching in the classroom, especially in terms of assessment methods as they do not have a clear idea about the assessment and evaluation methods to apply with intercultural competence.