The curriculum development process of cultural foreign language course for university students

Language and culture are an inseparable whole, and culture is considered the fifth basic skill in language teaching programs. Beyond language skills, communicative competence requires understanding cultural contexts, communication styles, and social norms. Incorporating cultural elements into foreign language education improves communication skills and prepares students for intercultural interaction in a globalized world. In this regard, the aim of this study is to determine the needs of university students to improve their intercultural communicative competence skills and to design, implement and evaluate the "Cultural Foreign Language Course Teaching Program", which will improve the students' intercultural communicative competence skills and make the use of foreign languages more effective in response to this need. Since different quantitative and qualitative methods were used together in the research, concurrent mixed design-intervention (experiment) design constitutes the methodology of the research. The program development process started with a needs analysis study designed according to a democratic approach. In this regard, in order to determine the needs, data were collected using both qualitative and quantitative methods from university preparatory class students, lecturers teaching in preparatory classes, and Erasmus coordinators of Erasmus Partner universities. The qualitative data obtained were subjected to content analysis, and the quantitative data were subjected to t-test, frequency analysis, item difficulty index test, item discrimination test and Cronbach Alpha coefficient test with the SPSS package program. Within the framework of the content analysis results, it was determined that the students needed training in terms of intercultural communicative competence and the program design phase was started. The four basic dimensions of the program, namely target, content, training situations and measurement-evaluation stages, are structured according to the results of the needs analysis. The designed program was applied to two different groups through face-to-face training in the 2021-2022 fall semester and online training in the spring semester. Based on the process-oriented evaluation approach, unit tasks, reflective diaries, portfolio files, presentations and course evaluation forms were used, and an achievement test was used as a measurement-evaluation tool in the form of pre-test and post-test to evaluate course success. CIPP Program Evaluation Model stages were followed to evaluate the designed Cultural Foreign Language Course Teaching Program. According to the research findings, it was determined that there was a need to improve the cultural knowledge, skills and attitudes of the university students participating in the study. A Cultural Foreign Language Course Teaching Program has been developed to meet this need. According to the available data, it was determined that the program developed the targeted knowledge, skills and attitudes positively. In addition, this program contributed to the development of students' general language proficiency and intercultural communicative competence levels and supported the formation of cultural awareness and the development of feelings and attitudes such as cultural awareness, empathy and tolerance. Additionally, a significant difference was observed between the achievement pre-test and post-test results of the experimental groups. Therefore, this finding shows that the students have achieved the achievements of the Cultural Foreign Language Course Curriculum at a sufficient level. Implementing the designed program or a similar one in secondary education levels, conducting studies to compare the results by applying the version suitable for teaching Turkish as a foreign language to foreign students, conducting research on the professional experiences of the students who have taken this course, and determining to what extent the knowledge and skills they acquired in the course will contribute to them while practicing their profession. It is recommended to investigate the cultural problems that individuals from different cultures participating in programs such as Erasmus and Work and Travel encounter while interacting, to create a problem pool and to conduct an experimental study on their possible solutions. Keywords: Curriculum Development, Needs Analysis, Intercultural Communicative Competence, Foreign Language Teaching, Mixed Method