TOWARDS THE INTEGRATION OF CULTURE INTO TEACHING ENGLISH IN UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOLS: TEACHERS’ CONCERNS AND EXPECTATIONS

Abstract

As a part of educational reform in upper secondary education, intercultural competence has been identified as a goal of foreign language teaching to enable the Vietnamese young people to work and study in globalized environment. In fact, culture has been incorporated in the expected English teaching curriculum for general education. Prior the change of curriculum at national scale, this study aimed to explore teachers’ perceptions of integrating intercultural competence into teaching English at upper secondary level. The quantitative and qualitative data collected from 101 teachers of English in a province of the Mekong Delta, indicated that they took the four aspects into considerations, namely learners’ learning strategies and motivations, teachers’ intercultural instructions, course books and curriculum, and management aspects. For better practice of intercultural integration, the teachers had high expectation for pedagogical training to enhance their intercultural competence and intercultural integrating pedagogies. From the findings, some pedagogical implications were made to foster the feasibility of intercultural integration in teaching English in upper secondary level. Keywords. educational reform, intercultural competence, intercultural integration, teachers’ perceptions, upper secondary education