Investigating Teachers’ and Students' Attitudes towards the Impact of Cultural Awareness on Students Speaking Skills Case of: EFL Teachers and Second Year Students at the University of 8 Mai 1945, Guelma

Abstract

The major goal of English language teaching and learning is to provide learners with the ability to use English effectively during communication and to enhance their speaking skills. But, many students of English as a foreign language cannot use the target lan-guage appropriately due to cultural unawareness. Correspondingly, this study aims at investigating the attitudes of both teachers and students towards the effect of cultural awareness on students’ speaking skills. Thus, it is hypothesized that raising second year students’ cultural awareness would improve their speaking skills. In order to test this hypothesis, a descriptive quantitative method is used in which two questionnaires were addressed and distributed to fifty three second year students, and to twelve teachers at the department of English, University of 8 Mai 1945- Guelma. The analysis of results revealed that both students and teachers are aware of the importance of developing students’ cultural awareness and its effectiveness in enhancing students’ speaking skills. Furthermore, most questionnaires' participants insist on the need of inte-grating culture in foreign language classes. This assumes that most of second year stu-dents and their teachers believe that attracting students attention towards the target culture acts as an effective tool in improving speaking skills. Thus, our research hypoth-esis is confirmed. On the basis of these results, it is recommended that teachers have to raise students’ awareness towards the importance of appropriately speaking English, and help them to develop this skill through the use of cultural awareness activities and strategies.