THE EFL TEACHERS’ PERCEPTION ON BUILDINGUP INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVECOMPETENCE IN THE CLASSROOM

ABSTRACT Zayadi, Adetio. 2019. The EFL Teachers’ Perception on Building Up Intercultural Communicative Competence in the Classroom. Supervisor : Dr. Alamsyah Harahap, M.Lib., and Co-supervisor : Dr. Dedi Sofyan, M.Hum. The present research focused on probing into the English as foreign language (EFL) teachers’ perception on intercultural communication in the classroom, how they build up intercultural communicative competence in the classroom, and analyzing their English teaching process in the perspective of intercultural language learning (ILL) principles. A mixed- method sequential explanatory strategy was employed to reveal the data oriented to the aforementioned focuses. Eighteen EFL teachers engaged as the correspondent of the questionnaire while three EFL teachers were selected as the participant of interview and observation. They were selected based on the purposive sampling technique and taken from four Junior High Schools in Gading Cempaka, Bengkulu. To solicit the required data, the questionnaire, interview, and observation were exerted which were further analyzed by using the interactive model of data analysis. The results indicated that the EFL teachers consider that intercultural communication and the objective of intercultural communication in teaching English are very important. Moreover, they most frequently apply the intercultural teaching method or approach by intercultural communication in teaching English, and they strongly agree intercultural dimension in teaching English as foreign language. In building up intercultural communicative competence in the classroom, the EFL teachers conveyed cultural material or intercultural awareness, informed the difference of the students’ own culture and other culture, gave the daily life as the most important topic, and discussed about cultural similarities and differences. In turn, the EFL teachers also capably enacted five ILL principles in many activities in the classroom such as posing leading question, free talk, peer checking, comparing and contrasting culture differences, cooperative learning and discussion. Keywords : Perception, Intercultural Communicative Competence, Intercultural Language Learning