Innovation in Language Learning

Culture plays an important role in foreign language (FL) teaching and learning and is one of the most important standards of world language education according to the USA ACTFL standards (The National Standards Collaborative Board, 2015). However, many CFL teachers face the dilemma of integrating cultural learning into the regular class curriculum. In this study, I created an online survey—the Instructor Perception Questionnaire—consisting of a 7-point Likert scale, multiple-choice questions, and open-ended questions, and collected feedback from 260 CFL teachers worldwide. The purpose of the study is to investigate CFL teachers’ perceptions of teaching the Chinese language through cultural context and their reflections on how to improve the current CFL teaching environment. The results show that with appropriate integration of cultural knowledge into students’ target language learning, students demonstrate improved communication skills when interacting with native Chinese speakers.

Keywords: Culture-integrated language teaching, Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL), Teacher perceptions, Cultural context in language learning

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