Investigating the Integration of Teaching Culture in EFL Classrooms and its Role in Developing Learners’ Intercultural Communicative Competence.

Abstract

This research work aims at investigating the incorporation of culture teaching within the process of teaching English as foreign/second language in Algerian secondary schools, and its role in developing EFL learners at secondary schools. To carry out this research, a questionnaire was designed to secondary school EFL teachers and a checklist for analyzing the cultural content of Getting Through textbook of second year. The results obtained from the data collected show that teaching culture is a marginal component in the teaching process, and intercultural communicative competence does not have much importance as the linguistic competence. Moreover, it showed that teachers are aware of the importance of the target culture but they are limited by a specific program and the lack of necessary materials notably the technological ones. In addition, the analysis of the textbook revealed that EFL learners lack the cultural aspects. The cultural themes portrayed in the textbook are not sufficient and the cultural components are not adequately covered. On the basis of these results, some strategies, methods, techniques and procedures are suggested and recommended for both the EFL teachers and for textbook designers in order to develop intercultural communicative competence content in EFL classroom at secondary schools.