The Role of English Culture in Teaching English as a Foreign Language to Second Year Literary Stream Classes at Kais Secondary Schools

This dissertation attempts to offer an insight into the current situation of English culture teaching in EFL classes at the level of secondary schools. It investigates the importance attributed by EFL teachers at Kais secondary schools to the teaching of English culture as compared to other language aspects for second year literary stream classes. The present work consists of; an introductory chapter on the methodology adopted to conduct the research, and the rest of the dissertation is divided into two main parts, each part includes three chapters. The first part represents the literature review related to the study. In the first chapter the researcher discusses some general considerations on the relationship between language, culture, and communication, she also provides an overall idea on the major contributions in providing an argument on the need to incorporate culture into EFL classes. In the second chapter the main aspects related to the teaching of culture such as its developing role in Foreign Language approaches and methods, the goals for teaching culture as well as the challenges and limits of classroom instruction are dealt with. The researcher goes further to shed light on the various materials, approaches and activities for teaching culture .The third chapter deals with the current situation of EFL instruction within the secondary school syllabus, its official set objectives, the approach adopted, and on a particular side the second year textbook “Getting Through”. In the second part which constitutes the field work, the researcher tends to explore teachers’ as well as students’ perspectives and opinions towards the issue under investigation. She explores the activities, topics, and materials currently used to teach culture; through designing two questionnaires and an interview . Based on the theoretical ground and empirical research findings, a set of suggestions was provided to EFL teachers at the secondary schools in order to offer useful ways of integrating culture into their classes and supplementing their textbooks with cultural element. In addition, some culture related activities were provided. The researcher reminds the reader that the findings are not an overgeneralization but just an attempt and an ultimate insight into the situation