Teachers and Students' Perceptions toward the Target Culture Teaching

Learning a foreign language means learning the culture of that specific language. A successful communication is achieved through having the knowledge of deep cultural aspects of the target communitys social know-how and socio-cultural norms. Knowing how, why and when to say what to whom is very crucial to be culturally appropriate in foreign language usage. However, EFL educators and scholar directed their attention to the lack of cultural instruction of the target language in EFL classrooms. Therefore, it is very important to investigate the situation of target culture teaching in Moroccan high school institutions and its place in EFL textbooks. The present study hypothesizes that there is an under-representation of target language culture and its deep features in Moroccan EFL curricular and the focus is likely to be on the incorporation of surface elements of other foreign cultures. It also assumes that both students and teachers encounter many challenges in target culture teaching and learning due to students low linguistic level in English and due to the types of cultural contents included in textbooks.