An investigation into three different techniques to raise critical cultural awareness

Subject Areas : Curriculum Research

Leila  Amiri Kordestani ¹ (Department of English, College of Literature, Humanities, and Social Sciences, Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch, Tehran Iran)
Massood  Yazdanimoghaddam ² (Department of English Language Teaching, Garmsar Branch, Islamic Azad University, Garmsar, Iran)
Parviz  Maftoon ³ (Department of English, College of Literature, Humanities, and Social Sciences, Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch, Tehran Iran)

Received: 2023-10-01 Accepted : 2024-02-21 Published : 2024-03-10

Keywords: Critical Cultural Awareness, Culture Capsule, Culture Narratives, Culture Training Activities, Language Learning,

Abstract :

This study attempted to explore to what extent each of the three techniques of culture narratives, culture capsules and culture training activities significantly affect the critical cultural awareness of Iranian EFL learners by comparing their means from pretest to post-test questionnaire after ten-session treatment. Furthermore, it investigated whether there are any differences in the effectiveness of these techniques. Regarding the participants, the testing group was 154 undergraduate English language translation students, including both male and female students, forming three experimental groups. This investigation used the quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design. The sampling method was convenience sampling. The homogeneity test and a pre-post critical cultural awareness questionnaire were used to collect data. The collected data were analyzed through Repeated Measures ANOVA and Simple Effect Analysis. Based on the obtained results, there were significant differences between the pretest and the post-test, which means that by applying the techniques mentioned above, the critical cultural awareness of learners increased. Also, there were significant differences between the three groups’ overall means on pre-post critical cultural awareness questionnaires. Considering the three groups, culture narratives, culture capsule and culture training activities, the former outperforms the others. Furthermore, between culture training activities and culture capsule groups, the culture training activities group performed better than the culture capsule group.

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