EFL Teachers’ Perceptions of The Place of Culture in ELT: A Survey Study at Four Universities in Ankara/Turkey

This study aims to investigate Turkish teachers’ opinions and beliefs on the place of target cultural information in English language teaching, as well as their related practices andapplications in EFL classrooms in Turkish higher education context. Particularly, it tries toexplore three research questions: (a) How do Turkish teachers of English define culture? (b)What are the EFL teachers’ attitudes towards incorporating cultural information into theirteaching? and (c) What role do they allocate to the culture of the target language in theirclassrooms? The study shows that teachers mostly define culture in the sociological sense, suchas values and beliefs. Their definition of culture in the framework of ELT slightly shifts towardsmore visible culture, such as food and clothing. The study also reveals teachers’ positive attitudestowards incorporating cultural information in their instruction.