Teachers’ Understanding on Cultural Aspects in Teaching English (A Case Study on the English Teachers at Junior High Schools in Bulukumba)

Teachers of a language are also teachers of culture (Byram, 1989). Culture and teaching language cannot be separated. Thus culture must be recognised as an important area in language learning and teaching. The research questions do the English teachers understand the cultural aspects of teaching English at Junior High School in Bulukumba? And do the teachers aware of communication style as the aspect of culture in teaching English? The objectives of the research are aimed to investigate English teachers’ understanding about culture, their understanding on the role of the target culture in teaching English at Junior High School in Bulukumba and to investigate English teachers’ awareness on communication style as the aspect of culture in teaching English. This research is under applied sociolinguistics. The researchers investigate the understanding of the teachers on the communication style as the cultural aspect, which consists addressing people, greeting and farewell, complimenting and showing appreciation, expression emotion, giving feedback, interrupting and asking. The method of the research is qualitative and quantitative. According to Gay (1981), this method is named exploratory mixed-method design. The subjects of the research were the teachers of English at Junior High School in Bulukumba. There were 30 teachers from forty schools. In this study, the researchers used three instruments for collecting the data. They were a test, questionnaire and interviews. The research result that the teachers of junior high school in Bulukumba have varying understanding of cultural aspects of English. Their difference in understanding cultural aspects of English is influenced by how long they learn an English culture, and most of them have the average ability in understanding the culture of English, it because of they have limited time to learn a culture. Therefore, cross-cultural understanding should be taught in each English class and another subject of English