Deneysel bir çalışma: Kültür öğretiminin öğrencilerin motivasyonu ve dil yeterliklerine etkisi

In recent years, many foreign language teachers and educators became aware of the importance of teaching the culture of the target language. The importance of gaining communicative competence and maintaining intercultural interaction has fostered the importance of integrating cultural elements into language instruction.In this study, two aspects of culture teaching are studied. One is the motivation of students toward learning target culture, and the second one is the effects of cultural instruction on students? linguistic abilities: speaking, use of English and vocabulary and reading. In order to achieve these two goals, a four -week cultural syllabus was designed, and while the experimental group received cultural instruction, no cultural instruction was given to the control group. During culture classes, culture lessons and culture and the four skills integrated lesson were covered. Culture pre- post test and the results of use of English (grammar) and vocabulary, reading, and speaking tests were calculated in the SPSS 17.0 statistics program.The results of the four culture post-tests revealed that the experimental group scored higher than the control group. That showed that students in the experimental group were highly motivated towards learning target cultures. On the other hand, the results of the exit exam revealed that the scores of the experimental group students were statistically higher than the results of the control group in speaking test. That showed that integration of cultural elements into the existing curriculum helped students improve their communicative abilities.This study also shed a light on the question of how to and what to integrate into language classes as `culture?. Some ideas and materials are presented for the teachers who are interested in integrating target culture into EFL classes.