Culture: Is it an avoidable or adorable concept in EFL settings?

Abstract

Inseparability of culture and language teaching has been the discussion of the field of ELT for many years now. The 'culture' perceptions of teachers and learners in EFL classrooms have been rarely addressed. Therefore, this study attempts to investigate Turkish EFL teachers' and learners' perspectives on the teaching of 'culture' in ELT classrooms. The participants of the study are 62 learners and 35 EFL teachers. The data were obtained by means of the learner and teacher questionnaires and the interviews which were prepared according to the field notes and unstructured observations by the researcher. The findings of the study, on the one hand, seem to present that learners and teachers employ favourable views on the learning and teaching of culture-general knowledge, behavior and attitudes. On the other hand, there seems to be an unawareness of the issue of culture-specific knowledge, behavior and attitudes on both parties. Furthermore, the teachers tend to adopt a reluctant behavior to implement the culture-general issues which hold the responsibility of learners' becoming "intercultural beings" across cultures.