Incorporating culture and textbook adaptation practice for promoting intercultural competence in ELT: Teachers’ perspectives

Abstract

It is currently accepted that language and culture are inseparable since culture becomes an essential aspect of learning a foreign language. In the Indonesian context, this broad understanding of the crucial role of culture in English teaching has raised challenges in different contexts for EFL teachers. The recent study focuses on Indonesian Junior High School teachers’ views on integrating culture in ELT and practices of textbook adaptation to help students build intercultural competence. Therefore, to meet these aims, a questionnaire and an open-ended question were employed to collect the data from fifteen participants teaching English at public and private schools in Indonesia. The study results reveal that Indonesian EFL teachers have positive attitudes on integrating intercultural competence in ELT. Still, some of the difficulties confronted by their implementation of textbook adaptation have been highlighted in promoting intercultural competence. This study suggests that EFL teachers in Indonesia should be provided with teacher training relating to textbooks adaptation and teaching culture. The implementation of ICT in ELT classrooms is also recommended. Finally, the redesign of the curriculum with more integrated intercultural competency materials should be taken into account.
 HIGHLIGHTS:
 
 The EFL teachers’ practices deal with textbook adaptation are not well implemented, although they believe that cultural competence in their teaching activities is crucial.
 The English curriculum should give more room for teachers in serving the students based on their needs, preferences, and skills, especially for enhancing students’ mastery on the target language.
 

Teaching Deep Culture to Develop Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) for EFL Pre-service Teachers

“…This approach affords students with the ease of acquiring knowledge of distinctive world societies, examining them critically and correlating them with their native culture to foster students' transferable skills in both communication and non-communication. This is in accordance with the vision of incorporating deep culture in the EFL teaching which provides us with direct insight into the perspectives of other cultural groups, and it is this understanding that results in interactions that are more productive (Dabou et al, 2021;Novita & Purwati, 2021;Snighda, 2022). To develop ICC, there are diverse areas of cultural content that can be taught in EFL teaching such as apologizing, politeness and face and miscellaneous topics.…”

The Role of Teaching Foreign Languages in Developing Intercultural Competence

“…Regardless of many research works on the issues of intercultural communication skills development in academic settings (Zhou, 2011;Bouchard, 2017;Nerubasska et al, 2020;Novita & Purwati, 2021;Eddy, 2022), the subject is still open to debate and raises questions to be faced immediately. To address the scholarly gap, the proposed study aims to examine the ways of developing intercultural communicative competence in foreign language teaching practices.…”

Teachers’ Practices Toward Cultural Representations in an EFL Textbook: Preparing Students for A Global Experience

“…Therefore, sociolinguistic variation should be taught to students to aid them in understanding the meaning of the differences based on the situation and context. Additionally, cultural awareness enables students to communicate effectively (Novita & Purwati, 2021). In other words, to become fluent in English, students should not only study the language's linguistics but also its culture.…”