ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER CANDIDATES’ VIEWS ON AMERICAN CULTURE

The purpose of this study was to investigate the change in Turkish EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teacher candidates’ views on American culture from the beginning to the end of a four-year EFL teacher education program. The participants of the study were 150 (75 first-year and 75 fourth-year) EFL teacher candidates studying in the EFL teacher education program of a state university in Turkey. The participants’ views on American culture were investigated with the help of a questionnaire which had a total of 55 items focusing on different dimensions of American culture. These dimensions are power distance, individuality-collectivism, femininity-masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and long-short term orientation. For each item the participant reads a sentence which claims to be reflecting American culture and decides whether s/he agrees or disagrees with, or cannot decide about the item. In order to ensure the content validity of the questionnaire, the items were evaluated by 15 Americans (8 females, 7 males; 9 whites, 6 blacks; age ranging from 26 to 52) in terms of their appropriateness for reflecting American culture. The results of the study indicated that there are not important differences between first-year and fourth-year participants of the study in terms of their views on American culture. The implications of the results for EFL teacher educators and teacher education curriculum designers were discussed in the paper.