The intercultural competence in EFL classroom : perspectives, practices and challenges

الملخص EN

No one is living in isolation anymore, as intercultural encounters are inevitable in our present multicultural world.

Efforts were made by policy makers to integrate culture into EFL textbooks and classrooms for the purpose to raise learners' intercultural communicative competence.

Teachers are now required to prepare students to be world citizens.

This paper presents the findings from a questionnaire inspired from Sercu and Bandura (2005) international investigation on teachers and intercultural competence.

It aims at providing answers to the following aspects: EFL teachers' perception of culture integration in the classroom, their tendencies in selecting cultural materials and the challenges they encounter in doing so.

Results gathered have yielded that teachers are generally aware of the importance of teaching and integrating culture in the EFL classroom.

Furthermore, it revealed that teachers are knowledgeable about the aspects of the target culture to some extent, but the way they deal with the target culture is affected highly by the curricular considerations and limitations.