Proceedings of The 6th World Conference on Research in Teaching and Education
Year: 2023
DOI:
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Students Opinions about Incorporating Ethnographic Interviews to Develop Intercultural Awareness into Taiwan’s College EFL Classes
Ya-Chen Su
ABSTRACT:
Learning about foreign language (FL) cultures is becoming the national standard of FL curriculum in Taiwan. The purposes of this study were to discuss how to incorporate the ethnographic interviews into Taiwan’s EFL college classes and how students’ viewpoints about native English speakers and their cultures have been changed after the use of the ethnocentric interviews. Two research questions were posed: (1) What knowledge of target cultures do students develop through the use of the ethnographic interviews? (2) How do students’ views about target cultures have been changed after the course of the study? Data were collected by oral and written report and interview. Results found that students experienced culture as a process of creating meaning through direct interaction and communication with target language speakers. They thus gained insight into the values of target cultures and expand their understanding of similarities and differences between the target cultures and their own.
keywords: ethnographic interviews, intercultural awareness, EFL learning and teaching