Teachers’ and Students’ Perceptions towards Culture and Culture-related Topics in Non-English Major Korean University English Language Classrooms

This paper aims to primarily assess two things: 1) student and teacher perceptions regarding culture and the sources of cultural content in the Korean university EFL context, and 2) the specific culture-related topics that teachers and students in this setting prefer to teach and learn, respectively. Both qualitative and quantitative data was gathered through questionnaires distributed to 607 students currently enrolled in English conversation classes offered at a Korean university and 12 professors of English at the university. The first section asked teachers and students about: 1) the importance of culture in the language classroom, 2) how they valued different sources of culture (target, international, source), and 3) how their interest in certain culture-related topics affected their motivation to study. The second section asked both groups about their preference for specific culture-related topics (including both Big “C” and little “c” topics). The results revealed that while both students and teachers agreed on the importance of culture in class, students preferred to study native English speaking (target) cultures over non-native cultures. Results also showed that both students and teachers found topics like “popular culture” and “lifestyles” interesting, yet differed on others. Discussion for application and relevance are also provided.