Acculturation Approach in the EFL Classroom: Attitudes and Beliefs (Published)
This article aims to understand the importance for Saudi students of learning about English/American culture in developing learners’ communicative competence. To this end it intends to explore the attitudes of students and parents of students to incorporating English/American culture into the EFL classroom. A quantitative approach was used for the data collection, consisting of a structured-questionnaire presented to 200 student and parent participants. The results of this study show that most students who were surveyed have a strong motivation to learn the English language in order to gain access to the culture of English-speaking countries such as the UK and the USA. Hence, they want to focus on communicative competence rather than linguistic competence in learning English. The majority of student participants who want to learn about the target culture prefer learning this at intermediate school. Also, the results show that some parents treat learning the target culture with suspicion, because of the fear of losing Saudi identity by studying authentic materials. But despite this most parent respondents have positive attitudes to learning English/American culture in the EFL classroom. The originality of this article is including parents in the belief that their participations cannot be ignored because of their influence on their children’s views. This study concludes with some useful references to ways of learning English/American culture in the EFL classroom.
Keywords: Acculturation, Makkah., authentic materials, enculturation, textbooks