Investigating Teachers and Students’ Perspectives Towards the Impact of Cultural Competence on Enhancing EFL Students’ Reading Comprehension

Abstract

The present study aims at investigating students’ and teachers’ perspectives towards the effect of cultural competence on EFL students’ reading comprehension. In fact, the core of foreign language teaching and learning is to enable students to understand the target language as well as to know its culture. Yet, many students of English as foreign language learners face difficulties in reading comprehension as far as target cultural aspects are concerned. Correspondingly, we hypothesized that developing First Year Master students’ cultural competence would improve their reading comprehension. In order to test this hypothesis, a descriptive quantitative method is used in which two questionnaires were addressed and distributed to ninety-two first year Master 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 conscious of the importance of developing students’ cultural competence and its significance in improving students’ reading comprehension. Moreover, most questionnaires’ participants emphasize the need of bringing culture into class in a separate module and not just being integrated in other modules in the first four years. This assumes that the majority of first year Master students and their teachers believe that enriching students’ knowledge and developing their competence in the target culture is a significant way to enhance their reading comprehension. Thus, our research hypothesis is confirmed. Based on these results, it is highly recommended that teachers raise their students’ awareness towards the importance of being culturally competent to improve their reading comprehension particularly culture-based texts.