Teachers' perceptions and practices of cultural content in elt classrooms

In the developing world, international interaction has increased with the effects of globalization. In this environment where different cultures are fused, in addition to foreign language teaching, the idea of teaching cultures has also gained importance. The purpose of the study was to investigate teachers' perceptions towards cultural content integrated into the foreign language learning process. For this purpose, an online survey was applied to a total of 120 teachers from four universities in Turkey. This survey was applied to understand teachers' perceptions about objectives of culture teaching, language teaching and frequency of culture teaching activities practiced in English classes. Questionnaires and semi-structured interviews are used to collect data. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the quantitative data, while content-analysis was used to interpret the interviews. The semi-structured interview was conducted to better understand the relationship between teachers' perceptions and practices. According to the descriptive statistics results, it was seen that while teachers give importance to linguistic competence, they also have a high level of cultural awareness and do culture teaching activities. Also, interview showed that the instructors have positive perception for culture teaching. The instructors perceive the primary objectives of teaching culture as presenting information on the target culture's everyday lives and routines, as well as developing attitudes of openness and tolerance toward other communities and cultures.The most common activities performed in the classrooms are discussing and exhibiting fascinating and engaging features of target language, as well as communicating about their own experiences or familiar topics.