Development of awareness of the cultural features of the target ‎language and English learners’ attitudes towards that

The significance of awareness of the cultural features of the target language society has been highly recognized. The present study investigated whether students can benefit from instruction on the target language cultural issues. It also investigated the attitude of two groups towards the incorporation of cultural components of the target language community into their classroom instructions from affective, cognitive, and behavioral viewpoints. Group A received instruction on the target language cultural issues and group B didn’t received any instruction on target culture .After one semester of cultural instruction, an achievement test and an attitude questionnaire were used to gather data. The results revealed that both group improved their overall learning; however, group that received instruction on the target language cultural issues outperformed group that didn’t received any instruction on target culture. The findings also suggested that Iranian language learners have overall positive attitudes towards the target language culture and this positive attitude is obvious considering affective, behavioral, and more significantly cognitive domains. The pedagogical implications of the study suggested integration of target language cultural components into every language classroom instruction.