Intercultural competence and its reflection in the beliefs of Turkish teachers of English with regard to their teaching practices

The aim of the study is revealing the views of Turkish teachers of English about IC and its reflection on their teaching practices. The participants of the study were 76 Turkish teachers of English, 52 females and 24 males. 12 of them are teaching at primary schools, 35 of them are teaching at secondary schools and 29 of them are teaching at high schools in Kahramanmaraş. Data for the study were collected by means of a questionnaire which is a shortened form of the one developed by Sercu et al. (2005). Data analysis was fulfilled according to the answers of teachers to the items in the questionnaire. Completed questionnaires were subjected to descriptive and inferential statistical analysis using SPSS 21.00 software and mean and standard deviation of each item were calculated. The results of the study show that teachers of English have the view that culture teaching is a fundamental goal of English language teaching to a certain extent, however they do not have a clear perspective to integrate culture teaching in their classroom practices to develop their learners' intercultural competence. Key Words: English Language Teaching, Culture and Language, Intercultural Competence