Teaching Culture in EFL Classroom

Teaching a foreign language does not merely involve teaching its linguistic system but also its cultural system. A native speaker of English may tolerate EFL speaker’s grammatical or phonological errors in communication but cultural errors may not be tolerated and may create serious problems which lead to communication failure. Therefore, English culture should be given an adequate place in EFL teaching and syllabi if we want to produce competent users of English who can use it effectively and appropriately for communication with English people. For this reason, this paper aimed at raising Yemeni EFL teachers’ awareness towards integrating English culture into their EFL classes. It explored Aden University EFL teachers’ perceptions of the importance of integrating English culture into their EFL teaching and the actual practices they utilize for integrating English culture into their teaching. Data were primarily collected through a questionnaire webbed to 56 teachers (n=56) and then analysed by using SPSS. Findings have revealed that Yemeni EFL teachers held positive attitudes towards integrating English culture into their EFL teaching as their overall attitude was more than 4 (out of 5). There were significant differences in teachers’ attitudes which were gender-based as female teachers showed a higher overall positive attitude than their male counterparts. Other variables such as major, years of experience and academic level showed slight statistical differences. On the other hand, findings have shown a low level of integrating culture into actual teaching by both male and female teachers. Slight differences were found among their actual practices that can be attributed to teachers’ major and teaching experience. As per the findings, the study has provided some recommendations that may help Yemeni teachers to go beyond teaching linguistic skills and to integrate culture into their teaching of English.
 
You can read this article from here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332199761_Integrating_Culture_into_EFL_Teaching_A_Study_of_Yemeni_EFL_Teachers'_Perceptions_and_Actual_Practices

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