The intercultural communicative competence of the English language teachers and the extent of their contact with different cultures

In this study, it's aimed to determine the Intercultural communication competence of the English language teachers and the extent of their contact with different cultures. With the implementation of communicative approach in language learning process, intercultural communicative competence became a must. The population of this study includes English language teachers who work for middle schools within the central district of Malatya (Battalgazi and Yeşilyurt). The sample group of this study consists of randomly selected 76 English language teachers volunteered for the study. The study is designed according to survey method and four different data collection instruments are used. These instruments are; 'The extent of the contact with different cultures questionnaire' developed by the researcher, 'Intercultural awareness questionnaire', 'Intercultural sensitivity scale' developed by Chen ve Starosta (2000) and translated into Turkish by Sülü (2014), 'Intercultural effectiveness' scale developed by Portalla and Chen (2010) translated into Turkish by Yakar (2016). The obtained data was analyzed by means of statistical package program. Along with percentage, arithmetic mean, standard variation, independent sample t test and Anova test are used during the analysis. According to the findings of this research English language teachers mostly use social media and internet in order to get information about different countries. They sometimes use museums and cultural centers and rarely use educational programs about culture. The intercultural communicative competence of the participants is at high level. Variables like gender, teaching years and the faculty they graduated from didn't cause statistically meaningful difference. However the intercultural effectiveness of the participants with master degree is higher than the intercultural effectiveness of the participants with bachelor degree. Keywords: intercultural communicative competence, intercultural sensitivity, intercultural awareness.