Investigating Instructors’ and Students’ Attitudes towards the Effectiveness of Having Target Cultural Knowledge on Learning English as a Foreign Language

Abstract

Having positive attitudes towards the target culture can affect the teaching/learning process. Considering the importance of having the target cultural knowledge on learning English, the current study inspected the Peruvian instructors’ and students’ attitudes towards the effectiveness of having target cultural knowledge on English language learning. To achieve this end, 90 Peruvian teachers and 90 learners were chosen, and then they were given two researcher-made questionnaires to check their attitudes towards having target cultural knowledge. The researchers administered two questionnaires to measure the attitudes of the Peruvian teachers and students towards the effects of having the target cultural knowledge on learning English. The results of one- sample t-test indicated that both Peruvian teachers and students held favorable attitudes towards having target cultural knowledge for learning English language. The findings of the research can persuade teachers to use culturally-based materials in their teaching process.

Keywords

• cultural knowledge
• language
• learning english
• target culture
• peruvian teachers