Vietnamese high school EFL teachers’ perceptions of teaching cultural contents during the Covid-19 pandemic: A case study at Tra Vinh City

Abstract

In the field of foreign language education, cultural knowledge is as important as language skills. To date, little research explores how Vietnamese EFL (English as a foreign language) teachers perceive cultural teaching during the Covid-19 pandemic. To fill such gaps in the literature, this study was conducted on 64 EFL high school teachers in Tra Vinh Province with a questionnaire and 06 participants with an in-depth interview to explore their perceptions of cultural teaching during the Covid-19 pandemic, especially when there is a reduction in the contents of the new curriculum. This article applied the framework of Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) adapted from Byram, Gribkova, and Starkey (2002) and the Cultural Iceberg framework to analyze Vietnamese EFL high school teachers’ strategies in teaching cultural content. The findings revealed that teachers still have a positive view of the role of cultural teaching, and they still teach cultural knowledge despite the reduction of contents in English textbooks. Effective strategies applied when teaching online were also revealed.