Experiences and perspectives of in-service teachers of english at lower secondary schools towards the practice of culture teaching in english language classrooms

EXPERIENCES AND PERSPECTIVES OF IN-SERVICE TEACHERS OF 
ENGLISH AT LOWER SECONDARY SCHOOLS TOWARDS THE 
PRACTICE OF CULTURE TEACHING IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE 
CLASSROOMS 
Vu Thi Hoang Mai*, Nguyen Dieu Hong 
University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University 
Received: 05/09/2018; Revised: 25/09/2018; Accepted: 20/08/2019 
Abstract: This paper looks into the experiences and perspectives of teachers of English at lower 
secondary schools towards the practice of teaching culture in their classrooms. Data were collected 
quantitatively and qualitatively through semi-open questionnaires and group interviews with 45 teachers 
of lower secondary schools in a city in the north of Vietnam. It was primarily discovered that, although 
most of the informants had many years of teaching experience, and the conditions for teaching cultural 
contents in their classes were believed to be rather favorable, these teachers found it hard for them to 
actually implement culture teaching due to the lack of skills at exploring cultural contents in textbooks 
and conducting suitable in-class activities. Recommendations are made regarding professional 
development programs for in-service teachers of English at secondary schools in Vietnam in the future. 
Key words: In-service teacher perceptions, culture teaching, teaching cultural contents, ELT, secondary 
education 
1. Introduction 
 The National Foreign Language Project 2020 of Vietnam is coming close to the promised deadline 
with huge achievements in the reformation and promotion of standardized teaching and learning of 
languages, especially English. One of the hundreds of significant projects was the introduction of the 10-
year English textbook series into the modified national curriculum in 2012 under three official decisions of 
the Ministry of Education and Training (hereafter referred as MOET). Being used simultaneously with the 
7-year series, the 10-year series is supposed to help Vietnamese students of general education to acquire 
both proficient communicative language skills and cultural knowledge of the world and Vietnam, as well 
as a positive attitude towards global and local cultures (MOET, 2018). Although the importance of culture 
teaching has been largely assumed in the language classroom, a nation-wide survey on more than 3700 
Vietnamese teachers of English conducted by University of Languages and International Studies in 2015 
for a government-sponsored project showed that knowledge of and ability to teach culture and use that to 
build empathy was the second most prioritized content in these teachers’ demand regarding in-service 
training programs. Yet, there has been no reported training course specifically on culture teaching in 
addition to language proficiency promotion or general pedagogical skills. That is why it seems advisory 
that these teachers’ experiences and perceptions of culture teaching be investigated. 
 Culture teaching in the English language classroom has been among the most frequently scrutinized 
issues in the last 40 years over the globe. In the recent international literature in general, the discussion of 
this issue has revolved around tertiary instructors and students of English, rather than the concerned in 
secondary education, such as in Al-Amir (2017), DeCoursey (2012), Li (2016), Liu and Fang (2017), Phan 
and Locke (2016), Tseng and Chao (2012), Vo (2014), Yilmaz (2016), and many more. In another fashion, 
* Email: hoangmai2308@gmail.com 
other researchers like Godley (2012), Lefstein and Snell (2011), Norton (2013), Petraki and Nguyen (2016) 
look into culture teaching through a certain cultural aspect or product such as discourse genres, popular 
culture or a subject in a content-based English curriculum. In Vietnam particularly, a few studies have also 
tapped on the representations of culture in the national curriculum and curricular textbooks of general 
education and proposed some theoretical frameworks for cultural contents analysis (Dinh, 2012, 2014, 
2016). What has not been seen is a rich literature body into what Vietnamese teachers have perceived of 
culture teaching in the language classroom apart from how important culture is. Also, what has not been 
examined thoroughly ever is what our teachers of English in general education levels have done in their 
classrooms to bring culture into an English lesson. 
 Inspired by this niche in research, this current study aims to answer two questions: 
1. What do lower secondary teachers of English in Vietnam think about culture teaching in terms of the 
role of culture, the feasibility of culture teaching, the cultural contents in textbooks and the ultimate 
objectives of culture teaching in the English language classroom? 
2. What strategies have these teachers used to teach culture, entailing their methods to analyze cultural 
contents, learning skills to focus and specific activities to be applied? 
2. Theoretical framework 
 In order to answer the research questions, this study looks at the literature of perspectives towards 
culture teaching and the available approaches to teaching cultural contents as well as analysis of learning 
materials in the English language classroom. 
2.1. Perspectives towards culture in language teaching 
 Research into perspectives towards culture in language teaching and learning started as early as in the 
1950s and have proposed abundance of philosophy systems. Before the 2000s, culture teaching in foreign 
language education underwent such approaches like the conventional perspective, the systemic functional 
linguistics perspective, the practical perspective, the postmodernist perspective and the sociocultural perspective 
(Jebahi, 2013). These theories, on the one hand, approved of the importance of culture in the acquisition of a 
second language, and on the other hand, either viewed culture as a set of homogeneous, fixed a ... rage students to learn a foreign language 57.8% 
Improve students’ knowledge about the world 100.0% 
Provide a multi-perspective approach in problem-solving skills in communication 80.0% 
Build up & promote Vietnamese cultural identity 80.0% 
Other purposes 0.0% 
 According to the participants, teaching culture in ELT classrooms serves various purposes; however, the 
primary purpose is to improve students’ knowledge about the world (100%). Building up and promoting the 
Vietnamese cultural identity and providing a multi-perspective approach in problem-solving skills in 
communication rank second with 80% of responses. 
4.2. Teachers’ practice of culture teaching 
 The participants have different priorities in selecting topics to teach cultural contents. Family, 
festivals, customs and traditions, and education are the most widely chosen, while science and technology, 
press and media as well as law are among the least likely selected topics. The main reason for not choosing 
certain topics to teach culture is that teachers do not know how to explore and integrate such contents in 
their class. Some teachers inform in the interviews that some topics in the curricular textbooks require broad 
background knowledge which does not seem to meet the communicative needs of lower secondary school 
students. 
Table 4. Topics in English textbooks usually selected to teach cultural contents 
Family 88.9% Science and technology 17.8% 
Ethnicity 66.7% Education 66.7% 
Language 66.7% Health and healthcare 44.4% 
Geography 40.0% Social relationships 62.2% 
History 46.7% Law 35.6% 
Festivals, customs & traditions 100.0% Press and Media 22.2% 
Daily habits 80.0% Famous people 44.4% 
Energy sources and environment 40.0% Other topics 0.0% 
 As for the channels that teachers employ to teach culture, illustrated pictures and cultural information 
included in the text are mostly used (44.4%). It should be noted that students’ cultural knowledge and 
experience is a much more widely used channel than teachers’ knowledge and experience, with 35.6% and 
8.9% of responses respectively. 
Table 5. Languages skills usually integrated with cultural contents 
Listening 44.4% 
Reading 95.6% 
Speaking 82.2% 
Writing 53.3% 
Table 6. Reasons for choosing certain skills to teach cultural contents 
Texts for taught skill have explicit cultural input. 48.9% 
The skill allows easier conduct of learning activities with cultural contents 88.9% 
Others 0.0% 
 Tables 5 and Table 6 describe the percentage of language skills teachers usually use to combine with 
teaching cultural contents and the reasons why they choose such skills. In practice, most teachers usually 
integrate cultural content into teaching Reading and Speaking (95.6% and 82.2% respectively), while about 
half of the participants also choose to teach culture in their Listening and Writing lessons. The main reason 
for choosing certain skills to integrate cultural contents is that such skills seem to be more easily to be 
combined with cultural contents than the other skills do. However, 100% of respondents do not apply any 
cultural and intercultural theories in teaching cultural contents, claiming they do not know any of them. A 
majority of teachers are not sure about the necessity of using cultural/intercultural frameworks in their 
teaching while a third think such frameworks are needed. Therefore, training sessions on how to explore 
cultural contents in English textbooks are most anticipated (93.3% of responses). Procedure to teach culture, 
cultural information about specific cultures and cultural/intercultural theories come next with 75.6%, 71.1% 
and 57.8% of responses respectively. 
 As to the specific techniques that these teachers use to explore cultural contents in the textbooks and 
to conduct culture teaching, the follow-up interviews document tens of in-class activities such as 
“brainstorming”, “showing cultural video clips”, “discussion on cultures”, “predictions”, “students 
associating lesson contents with their own culture”, “quiz”, “question and answer”, “what and where”, “pair 
work”, “group work”, and many more. What is noticeable is that these answers seem very ambiguous in 
terms of dealing specifically with culture. Moreover, there is no answer to what techniques or methods have 
been used to analyze and explore cultural contents in the textbooks. 
5. Discussion and implications 
 As clearly stated in the findings of the study, despite the teachers’ absolute agreement on the 
importance of culture teaching, the majority of them find it impossible to properly conduct a culture-
integrated English lesson due to the lack of resources like time, encouraging policies or teachers and 
students’ readiness. This seems to reflect the perspectives of teaching foreign language before 2000, which 
considered culture as separable contents from language. Because of this view, both teachers and their direct 
supervisors either think it is too much to teach culture or neglect cultural contents altogether. 
 It is advisable to inform these education practitioners of such modern paradigms as English as an 
international language, intercultural communicative competence, multidialectal competence and metacultural 
competence, since they see culture as inextricably intertwined with language, implicitly implied or explicitly 
embedded in grammar, vocabulary, and discourse. These paradigms can provide teachers with pluricentric 
approaches to explore and teach culture. Moreover, an appropriate evaluation of the 10-year textbook series 
is also necessary for these teachers and their supervisors so as to help them get rid of confused and intimidated 
feelings when exposed to the densely displayed contents of the books. In fact, it is not necessary to conduct 
pre-, while- and post- activities for every text or skill because the abundant activities available in the books 
per se have been designed for exactly these same purposes. What teachers need to do may be to approach a 
lesson in a different way from the book itself. 
 On the contrary, it is also implied that these teachers start to realize the important relevance and 
legitimacy of local cultures to the Vietnamese learners in their support of the surpassing content of Vietnamese 
culture compared with the culture of English-speaking countries and their perceived objectives of teaching 
culture to promote the Vietnamese identity and students’ communicative competence. This is a sign of 
teachers’ readiness that undergirds the establishment of in-service training programs dealing with culturally 
responsible pedagogies. 
 The practice of culture teaching of the participants so far on the one hand indicates that the 
approaches of teaching culture-as-content and teaching language-and-culture have been applied in their 
classrooms. The culture-explicit topics and skills, the techniques of cultural capsule and cultural 
assimilators are the most frequently applied. This reality implies another perspective to culture teaching of 
the informants: they prefer to have a ready-to-use tool or culture-explicit materials to support their lessons, 
and some even have the tendency to select what is convenient for their job and what they are confident in 
to teach instead of working on what is advantageous for their students’ intercultural competence. 
 On the other hand, it is also shown from the data that these teachers really need official training about 
theories of intercultural communication, cultural linguistics and their application in cultural studies and 
culture teaching. Without suitable theoretical frameworks and hands-on experience in materials analysis 
and culture teaching activities, these teachers can neither evaluate the importance of cultural theories in 
their job nor assess if they have conducted an effective lesson which helps improve their students’ language 
and cultural competence. 
6. Conclusion 
 This study has looked into a group of lower secondary school teachers in the North of Vietnam as to 
their perspectives toward culture teaching and their experiences in teaching cultural contents in the English 
language classroom. The results of quantitative and qualitative data indicate that although the participants 
appreciate the importance of culture in language teaching and believe that there are favorable conditions 
for culture teaching, it is still challenging for them to integrate culture in language, especially when it comes 
to culture-implicit lessons. 
 Although this study has not managed to actually observe what really happens inside the classrooms 
of English, and the findings of this study cannot be generalized to all lower-secondary school teachers of 
English in Vietnam, it is highly recommended that in-service training sessions on culturally appropriate 
pedagogies should be conducted on a yearly basis, focusing on theories of linguistics, culture and 
intercultural communication and their applications in materials analysis and exploitation. 
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KINH NGHIỆM VÀ NHẬN ĐỊNH CỦA GIÁO VIÊN TIẾNG ANH 
 BẬC TRUNG HỌC CƠ SỞ VỀ GIẢNG DẠY VĂN HÓA 
 TRONG LỚP HỌC TIẾNG ANH 
Tóm tắt: Bài viết nghiên cứu kinh nghiệm và nhận định của giáo viên tiếng Anh bậc trung học cơ sở 
về thực tiễn giảng dạy văn hóa trong các lớp học tiếng Anh. Dữ liệu được thu thập từ bảng khảo sát và 
phỏng vấn nhóm đối với 45 giáo viên tiếng Anh cấp THCS tại một thành phố ở miền Bắc Việt Nam. 
Kết quả cho thấy, mặc dù hầu hết giáo viên tham gia nghiên cứu có nhiều năm kinh nghiệm giảng dạy, 
và họ tin rằng các điều kiện hiện có là thuận lợi cho việc tích hợp dạy văn hóa với dạy tiếng Anh trên 
lớp, các giáo viên vẫn thấy việc này khó thực hiện do giáo viên thiếu kĩ năng khai thác nội dung văn 
hóa trong sách giáo khoa hoặc giáo trình và kĩ năng triển khai hoạt động phù hợp trên lớp. Bài viết đưa 
ra một số đề xuất liên quan đến các chương trình bồi dưỡng nghiệp vụ sư phạm cho giáo viên tiếng Anh 
bậc phổ thông trong tương lai. 
Từ khóa: Quan điểm giáo viên, giảng dạy văn hóa, dạy nội dung văn hóa, ELT, giáo dục phổ thông