Search

The lingua franca role of English has made a significant contribution toward developing foreign language teaching curriculums from an intercultural perspective. The present study aimed to investigate how pre-service and in-service foreign language teachers consider the integration of culture into language teaching. The participants⿿ understanding of cultural elements they think should be integrated more in the curriculum was in the focus of the study, in addition to possible differences between perceptions of pre-service and in-service teachers. The study was carried out with 4th grade ELT students at the Faculty of Education, Pamukkale University⿿a state university in Turkey⿿and English instructors at the School of Foreign Languages at the same university in the fall term of 2015/16 academic year. Data were collected both quantitatively and qualitatively via an inventory of cultural components and interviews. In total, 43 instructors and 75 students responded to the inventory. Five students and four instructors were also interviewed. The inventory included 45 elements of culture under nine categories: ⿿intellectual values⿿, ⿿lifestyles⿿, ⿿behaviours⿿, ⿿media⿿, ⿿artistic values⿿, ⿿family⿿, ⿿minor values⿿, ⿿major values⿿, and ⿿formal values⿿. The results indicate that both pre-service and in-service teachers consider a wide range of cultural elements should be integrated into language teaching to enable the development of intercultural skills. Interview sessions revealed reasons why teachers think that culture should be integrated. Findings are expected to contribute to development of foreign language teaching curriculums that give importance to intercultural competence.

14th Language, Literature and Stylistics Symposium -- OCT 15-17, 2014 -- Selcuk, TURKEY WOS:000353900600047 Intercultural competence is needed for effective and appropriate intercultural interactions. However, differences between individuals and specific factors, such as directness/indirectness and collectivism/individualism, should be considered when examining cultural adaptation. This paper aims to reveal the possible effects that language proficiency has on cultural adaptation. Although the 31 American teachers surveyed in this study had different levels of Turkish language proficiency, the results indicated no significant differences between their language proficiency and sociocultural adaptation. However, a significant negative correlation was found between previous experience abroad and successful sociocultural adaptation in Turkey. The main conclusion of this study questions the relationship between traditional conceptions of language proficiency and successful sociocultural adaptation. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Dokuz Eylul Univ, Fac Educ, English Language Educ Dept

This study investigated the impact of a metacognitive reading strategy training programme (METARESTRAP) on metacognitive reading strategies and reading comprehension. The quasi-experimental study was conducted with 93 freshmen in the English Language Teaching Department of Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University. After pre and post reading tests and a metacognitive reading strategy questionnaire were administered, the six-week METARESTRAP was implemented. The results demonstrated that METARESTRAP significantly fostered reading comprehension skills by providing awareness of metacognition along with declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge about metacognitive reading strategies. It can be concluded that METARESTRAP worked well specifically for matching-type cohesion, coherence, text structure, and global meaning questions along with multiple-choice-type main idea, opinion, detail, and reference questions. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.