Culture and Language Learning: What do students think?

Abstract

This book examines the students' opinions of the role of 'culture' in learning English as a foreign language. The first aim of the book is to develop an instrument investigating students' opinions. The second aim is to explore whether there are similarities and differences among high school students regarding their opinions of the role of 'culture'. In order to do this, the instrument developed by the researcher was applied to 385 senior selective high school students from five different high schools in Edirne, Istanbul, and Diyarbakir in the academic year of 2005-2006. Descriptive statistics for the responses to the questionnaire items suggested that learning English for instrumental purposes, practicing aspects and skills of language, and inclusion of international topics in English language learning process were important. The participants also stated that native English speaking teachers teach English better than teachers from Turkey. However, being familiar with the cultures in Turkey and being able to speak Turkish were regarded as important characteristics of English language teachers.