What do learners perceive? A sociolinguistic survey on Iranian English language learners’ attitudes on mainstream ELT versus critical ELT
List of Authors
Davari, Hossein
Keyword
English language teaching, culture, mainstream trend, critical trend, attitude
Abstract
The growing presence of English especially through English language teaching
(ELT) is going to considerably influence any language education policy and
planning worldwide. Alongside such an influence, the appearance of critical
voices in the field of applied linguistics has resulted in some controversial
discussions around English and ELT. While this topic has received considerable
attention, reviewing the literature on the topic shows that the survey of learners’
attitudes, as one of the most important stakeholders in any language-in-education
planning, has been mostly neglected. In this paper, the author attempts to
investigate the Iranian English language learners’ attitudes towards English and
ELT to study their trends. To gain insight into the issue, a mixed-methods
approach, including both qualitative and quantitative methods, was designed and
conducted. In the first phase, both focus group and one-to-one interviews were
conducted. The content analysis along with the rich literature on the topic yielded
a twelve-item Likert-scale questionnaire. To survey the learners’ attitudes at
large, a questionnaire survey was conducted on 548 participants. Presenting and
discussing the findings under four categories reveal that Iranian learners mostly
tend to the mainstream trend and lack of awareness and sensitivity towards
possible influences of English and ELT on their language and culture is tangible.