DOI: 10.36347/sjahss.2016.v04i04.011

Pages: 380-388

Recently, there has been a growing interest in the intercultural dimension of English language education, and educators today are expected to promote the acquisition of intercultural competence in their learners. Thus, this study is aimed to investigate perspective including the opinions and attitudes of English Department lecturers on culture in English language teaching and to see how and to what extent these opinions and attitudes are reflected in their classroom applications. Also, this study proposes the importance of culture and intercultural dimension should be integrated into EFL instruction in order to help facilitate both language learning and effective communication. Data will be collected from 31 lecturers at English Department by means of a questionnaire, interview and classroom observation. The survey data includes questionnaire, demographic information, interview and observation will be analyzed descriptively. Findings revealed that lecturers are willing to support the language and cultural objectives, but that they experience conflicts when having to prioritize language teaching and culture teaching objectives. Lecturers point out that limited class time, curriculum requirements, a lack of cultural issues in the textbooks, and lecturers’ lack of cultural knowledge, were the main constraints for the integration of cultural teaching into EFL classes. It is interesting to consider the findings in the light of the approach to culture teaching proposed by the Indonesian National Curriculum (KKNI).