Cultural Awareness, Listening Comprehension, Listening Motivation, and Attitude among EFL Learners: A Gender-Based Mixed Method Study

Abstract

The current research investigated the effects of cultural awareness on listening comprehension and listening motivation of EFL learners. Also, this research investigated the perspectives of EFL students towards having English cultural awareness. Seventy-five EFL learners from three English intact classes were chosen as the subjects of this study. After that, a listening motivation test and a listening comprehension test were given to the three classes. Then, five audio files containing the English cultural-based issues were taught in one class and five audio files containing the Persian cultural contents were instructed to the other experimental class. The third class or the control class was instructed five audio files that did not include any specific cultural-based materials. After teaching all audio files, a listening motivation posttest and a listening comprehension posttest were given to the three groups and an attitude questionnaire was given to the experimental classes to determine their attitudes toward using the effectiveness of cultural awareness on their language learning development. The results of one-sample $t$ -test, one-way ANOVA, and the post hoc Sceffe test showed that the experimental classes outflanked the control class in the posttest of listening motivation and listening comprehension. The results indicated that the subjects showed a positive attitude toward having cultural awareness in their English learning process. The outcomes of the study provide some implications for teachers to increase the students’ cultural awareness and to enhance their positive attitudes about the integration of culturally based resources into language education.