Prospective Foreign Language Teachers’ Intercultural Sensitivity Levels: A Study with English, French and German Language Teaching Students at Anadolu University

Halil Elibol & Veda Aslım Yetiş, Anadolu University, Turkey, ID LLCE2017-115;    Abstract: In the last quarter of the 20^th century and in the 21^st century, the coexistence and mutual respect of different cultures have become very important in our world. Creating a society in which there is no inferiority or superiority and differences are accepted, and whose citizens are sensitive to the other cultures’ differences has become one of the most important issues in many countries. The concept has become important in the language education as well. With the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, Intercultural competence gained an utmost importance. The aim of this study is to make a descriptive analysis of intercultural sensitivity levels of the foreign language education students at Anadolu University. The study group consists of 203 volunteer prospective foreign language teachers of 3 different language teaching departments (English, French and German) at Faculty of Education. Intercultural sensitivity levels of teacher candidates were measured by Intercultural Sensitivity Scale developed by Chen and Starosta (2000). The scale has been applied in two times, at the beginning and at the end of the term. Findings showed that the foreign language students’ level of the intercultural sensitivity is quite high both at the beginning and at the end of the term and the analysis of paired samples T test indicated that there is a significant difference pre and post test results of the study. Descriptive analyses based on gender and the department revealed that male students have higher level of intercultural sensitivity at the beginning and at the end of the term and that there is a significant difference at the beginning of the term but not at the end. Anova analysis indicated that at the beginning and end of the term, students of French Language Teaching have the highest scores compared to others. 

Key words: Interculturality, Intercultural sensitivity, Prospective Foreign Language Teachers, Education