ABSTRACT
This research aims to explore how Vietnamese EFL teachers perceive and practise intercultural integration from the view of intercultural language teaching during online teaching due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Applying descriptive research design, this study makes use of two instruments complementary to each other: a questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. Participants were 64 upper-secondary school teachers of a province in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. Findings show that (1) the participating teachers had a higher level of perceptions than practices of intercultural integration of culture in online language teaching; (2) teachers’ most frequent activities to deal with cultures was illustrating intercultural content in the coursebooks with additional materials like videos, audio, pictures, movies, and songs to make the lessons more vivid and interesting; (3) activities involving teachers’ group work for sharing materials and connecting with foreigners to create real-life intercultural interaction for students to practise were rarely conducted; (4) online teaching made more favourable conditions to intercultural integration than offline teaching. This study recommends that teachers should establish professional groups to maintain and share good practices of making use of technology in their teaching of language and culture in integration or intercultural language teaching.
