Byram (1986) and Jiang (2000) concluded that it is virtually impossible to teach the target language without teaching the target culture. Contrary to this view, Graddol (1997) suggested home culture by giving the reason that the global future of English would be determined by second and foreign language speakers. This paper, taking this argument as a starting point, provides the basic content of culture teaching in ELT through varying definitions of culture. Then, the study is to determine which culture should be incorporated into English language classrooms. It comes to the end with approaches adopted in culture teaching in ELT.
Methods.
While doing this research paper, because of limited time, secondary structure approach was pursued. 13 articles relating to the research questions of culture and ELT were selected for analysis. Two of them were taken from Journal of Language and Linguistics Studies and Oxford Journal, which are respectively published in Turkey and the United States by professional disciplinary associations. Three other internet- based full articles in PDF or WORD format were carefully chosen, basing on website's reliability as well as the high number of citations. The rest came from books written by worldwide famous authors in my research field such as Nelson Brooks, Claire Kramsch. It is absolutely certain that the choice of all the above writings was motivated by the need to control as much as possible for such variables as relevant topic, writers' nationality, levels of experience and expertise, publication year, and the special features of sub description.
Results.
Overall, the analysis of 13 articles showed that there is a big variety of definitions of culture. According to anthropologists, culture was referred to as "the whole way of life of people or group. In this context, culture includes all the social practices that bond a group of people together and distinguish them from others.
