Enhancing the cross cultural competence of prospective language teachers

Abstract

In the twenty first century, education does not merely focus on information exchange; additionally, it does so on various abilities and living in harmony. To materialize such acquisition among students, cross cultural compe tence is an essential vehicle in a rapidly globalizing world. This calls for integrating comprehensive cross cultural education as an independent subject into teacher training programs alongside the applied practices that go with it. Against this backdrop, the current study aims to determine the cross cultural competency capabilities of Turkish language teacher candidates studying at one of the major universities in Turkey. In this article, initially cultural dimensions, scope of culture, and aspects of cro ss cultural competency are addressed on a theoretical basis. In addition, learning materials are developed by the candidates, based on the instructions provided by the researcher, and analyzed according to their content of cross cultural competency. The pa per also discusses the cultural background of the candidates and their cross cultural competency capabilities. The findings show that the participants have major difficulty presenting sufficient information or content in developing their cross cultural com petency. In the end, there are recommendations for enhancing the cross cultural competency capabilities, while shedding light on the inadequate focus devoted to improving these skills within the training programs.