Developing Intercultural Awareness through Portfolio-Based Writing Activities in Turkish Secondary EFL Classrooms

Abstract

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between direct teaching of culture in elementary writing lessons and development of intercultural awareness (ICA) among secondary school EFL learners at a Turkish state lower secondary school situated in the capital of Türkiye. The secondary purpose of the current study was to examine the attitudes from both student and teacher perspectives on developing ICA, focused on the writing skills sections of elementary EFL lessons. The sample consisted of fourteen secondary EFL teachers and 84 secondary EFL learners who were at sixth- (n=45) and eighth-graders (n=39) during the fall semester of 2021-2022 educational year. An adapted version of analytic writing rubric and semi-structured interview items as data collection tools were employed. The quantitative data were run via descriptive and inferential statistics while the qualitative data were analyzed through content analysis. The quantitative findings indicated that the experimental groups demonstrated a substantially superiority regarding ICA development over the control groups based on the achievement scores given to the written assignments in portfolios. Furthermore, between the experimental groups, it was revealed that the eighth-graders showed a slight superiority over the sixth-graders concerning ICA development in writing tasks. The qualitative findings illustrated that both in-service secondary EFL teachers and learners unearthed their general views and experiences about developing ICA and reflected a constructive attitude toward ICA-raising implementations in the pre-writing parts of EFL lessons. Bearing these results in mind, implications and suggestions were presented by addressing to teachers, students and other stakeholders.