Evaluation of Teachers’ Attitude toward Developing Intercultural Competence in Iranian EFL Learners

There is no doubt that we are living in times of great change, and the teachers who prepare their students for 21st century, are aware of local and global changes. Population mobility continues throughout the world and makes extensive intercultural contact necessary among different languages and cultures. Teachers of foreign languages are not an exception and find themselves are faced with challenge of promoting the acquisition of intercultural competence in the process of their teaching ( Lies Sercu, 2004). A careful analysis demonstrated that teaching the target culture to language learners would foster in these learners what Savignon and Sysoyev (2002) term sociocultural competence or what Sellami (2000) calls intercultural competence . In our dynamic, multicultural world, the ability of FL learners to appreciate the cultures of other people is inevitable. Bringing a foreign language to the classroom means connecting learners to a world that is different from their own. The objective of language learning is no longer defined in terms of acquisition of communicative competence of a foreign language; teachers are thus required to teach intercultural competence. According to Jessperson learning about the culture of another country is the highest purpose of language teaching.This study is concerned with English teachers in general who face the challenge of fostering the acquisition of intercultural competence through their teaching, in a world of great change and mobility. More specifically, consideration will be given to the neglected attitudinal aspect of teaching cultural elements to Iranian EFL learners. This study seeks to understand whether EFL teachers in Iran believe that language teaching is associated with culture teaching and investigate how teachers’ knowledge about culture and strategies of teaching culture affect their attitude in developing intercultural competence in learners. This research used a combined quantitative and qualitative method. The study participants were 50 Iranian EFL teachers. A questionnaire on intercultural knowledge and different aspects of that, was given to all of them and subsequently 10 among them were interviewed discussing their experience about difficulties in teaching cultural elements. After gathering the data and analyzing them, the study reported that Iranian EFL teachers believe that language teaching is basically intertwined with culture teaching despite of a degree of variation in their views. The study also found that there is a meaningful relationship between teachers’ knowledge about nature of cultural elements and developing intercultural competence in learners because there is a significant difference between the attitudes of teachers who believe more and those who believe less in teaching cultural elements. Finally, the present study demonstrated that, in order to support intercultural learning, EFL teachers need additional knowledge, competence and skills as well as strong positive attitude towards culture to foster intercultural competence in their learners.

کلیدواژه ها:

Communicative competence ، intercultural competence ، culture teaching ، cultural elements ، teachers’ attitude