THE PERSPECTIVES OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHERS ON INTERCULTURAL AWARENESS AT A UNIVERITY PREP-SCHOOL IN TURKEY

Turkey, ID CLEaR2015-240;

The spread of English as a global language raised some arguments against the centrality of native speaker norms of English in English language classrooms. Since most of the English speakers today are non-native, they are more likely to speak English in order to communicate with other non-native speakers of English. Therefore, the aim of English language teaching should be to provide the learners with varieties of English so that they gain an intercultural perspective of English. This research aimed to explore to what extent English language instructors in Turkey indicate intercultural awareness. Questionnaires and interviews were conducted with native English speaking teachers (NESTs) and non-native English speaking teachers (NNESTs) at a university preparatory school. The research findings provided remarkable information about teachers’ perspectives. The findings revealed that most of the teachers believed the importance of intercultural teaching; however, they experienced some difficulties reflecting their intercultural awareness into the classroom. This study can contribute to English language teaching by displaying teachers’ perspective on the issue. It can also help us look into the reasons underlying their beliefs about intercultural awareness, which may provide an insight into current situations in language classes. Also, the findings can suggest what should be done to enrich intercultural perspective in English language classrooms.

Keywords: nonnative English-speaking teachers (NNESTs), native English-speaking teachers (NESTs), intercultural awareness