Teachers' beliefs and practices regarding culture and intercultural communicative competence in Chinese teaching in the UK context

According to the British national language strategy (BNLS) (BDfES, 2002), foreign language (FL) teachers are expected to promote the learners’ acquisition of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) in class. As Chinese teaching has attracted attention and become popular in the UK currently, it is important for this study to explore Chinese teachers’ beliefs and practices with regard to culture and ICC in the context of TCFL. This study adopted the mixed methods research. The study first used a questionnaire survey to explore the beliefs of26teachers regarding culture and ICC in TCFL. Then, semi-structured interviews were conducted with to investigate 4teachersto understand their in-class teaching practices, and to explore what culture-related activities they really employed in class within the different educational levels they taught. This study found that Chinese teachers held positive beliefs regarding culture and ICC in the Chinese teaching context. Nevertheless, they were mainly familiar with the concept of culture, yet they might have had an inadequate understanding of ICC education. This study also found that the teachers believed that teaching language was the most important aim of Chinese teaching. Regarding practices, although the teachers were willing to employ in-class culture-related practices, the situation was still under-developed. Furthermore, the study found that the in-class practices were mainly in accordance with teachers’ beliefs, although some inconsistencies between beliefs and practices still existed