Views and Opinions of Kuwaiti EFL Teachers at College of Basic Education towards Teaching Foreign Cultures in Their Classrooms

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the sort of cultural content that is being taught in CBE, Kuwaiti EFL teachers’ views and opinions towards teaching a foreign culture in their classrooms at the College of Basic Education, and their strategies when they encounter socially inappropriate subjects or practices in their textbook, Empower B1+. Particularly, it tries to explore three research questions: (a) what sort of cultural content is being taught in EFL classrooms in the College of Basic Education? (b) What are the views and opinions of Kuwaiti EFL teachers at the College of Basic Education towards teaching a foreign culture (native or international) in their EFL textbooks with special reference to the cultural content of the textbook Empower B1+? (c) What are the strategies used by Kuwaiti EFL teachers when they encounter teaching inappropriate subjects or items? The data was collected by means of a questionnaire of 7 questions distributed to 25 randomly selected Kuwaiti EFL teachers working in CBE. The questionnaire had a rating scale of three (agree, not sure, and disagree) for all questions except for questions 1 and 4, where participants had to choose the appropriate answer of 3 sentences. The questionnaire was followed by a semi-structured interview for 10 Kuwaiti EFL teachers to get detailed and in-depth answers for question 3 of the research questions and to further discuss the other two questions. After the data analyses were carried out, the results revealed that the cultural content being taught in CBE is a mixed culture (native speaker and international cultures). The findings also showed that the vast majority of EFL teachers had positive views and opinions towards the teaching of a foreign culture in their classrooms with the condition of careful selection. In terms of encountering the socially inappropriate texts or items in the textbook Empower B1+, the results of the interviews showed that most of the EFL teachers preferred to skip such articles; a few were ready to discuss them, but only in boys’ classes.