Cultural Teaching Objectives

In order to understand teachers’ beliefs about cultural teaching objectives, eight objectives were listed on a 5 point Likert scale ranging from “not important” to “very important”. According to Zhou (2011), these objectives indicate the knowledge (Q. 1), attitudes (Q.s 3 & 8), skills of discovery, interaction, and interpreting (Q.s 4, 5, & 6), and awareness (Q.s 2 & 7) dimension in Byram’s (1997) model. To simplify the reporting, Saricoban and Oz’s (2014) framework was used to reduce the 5-point scale into 3-point, i.e., “important” (M= 3.5-5.0), “not important” (M= 1.0-2.4), and “moderately important” (M= 2.5-3.4). The means for all the eight objectives are above 3.76 which indicated that most of the participants considered cultural

social/political conditions) in English speaking countries. 3.93 .89 Important
Attitudes
Develop a curious/tolerant/respectful/open attitude towards other cultures and cultural difference. 3.76 .90 Important
Foster students’ respect for world cultural diversity. 4.26 .85 Important
Skills
Promote the ability to acquire new cultural knowledge from documents/events from English cultures. 3.78 .84 Important
Promote the ability to conduct effective communication with English speaking people. 4.40 .64 Important
Promote the ability to understand and critically interpret documents/events from English speaking culture. 3.81 .89 Important
Awareness
Promote understanding of different process of individual and social interactions in English and Iranian culture. 3.92 .96 Important
Promote awareness and understanding of different values, beliefs, and ideologies of both Iranian and English speaking people. 4.17 .92 Important

interaction, i.e., “Promote the ability to conduct effective communication with English speaking people” (M=4.40). The next two important objectives were related to attitude and awareness dimensions of ICC, namely, to “Foster students’ respect for world cultural diversity” (M= 4.26) and to “Promote awareness and understanding of different values, beliefs, and ideologies of both Iranian and English speaking people”