Integrating cultural knowledge into efl classrooms in secondary school context: Teachers' views

The aim of this study is to display the perceptions of English teachers about culture teaching and the role of culture teaching in foreign language classrooms. To reveal this role, this thesis study was designed as a qualitative research. This research method helped to reach my aim since it supported to make interviews to reveal the perceptions of participant teachers. It also gave an opportunity to the teachers to make observations about their students' reactions in the context of willingness to participate in the classroom activities during the culture integrated English lessons. The participants of this study were 15 secondary school English teachers. They implemented culture integrated lesson plans during four weeks in 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grades in 27 classrooms with 656 students. They made observations during the implementations and took observation notes and filled the observation checklist at the end of the lessons. The main instruments of the study were teacher interviews, four weeks culture integrated lesson plans and teachers' observation checklists. This thesis study aimed to find out the role of integrating culture to the second language classrooms by defining the relationship of culture with language. This study revealed that using cultural content in English lessons enhanced students' willingness to participate in classroom activities and changed secondary school English teachers' perceptions related to the integrating culture to the language classrooms.