Attitudinal Dispositions of Iranian EFL Students towards the English Language: Sociolinguistic and Sociocultural Considerations

The most common way for measuring the value, status and importance of one language is through attitudes toward that language. Attaining proficiency and competence in a second and foreign language is closely linked with the learners' attitudes toward the language. The aim of the current study is to look into the attitudinal dispositions of Iranian EFL students toward the English language given sociolinguistic and sociocultural considerations. A sample consisted of 30 EFL students (15 males and 15 females) from Saba English institute located in Tehran, Iran was selected. The participants were born in Iran and their native language was Persian but they differed from each other regarding age, gender and educational backgrounds. In order to collect data an in-depth interview was utilized. The results of the study revealed that the vast majority of the subjects of the study had positive attitudes toward learning English language in respect to sociolinguistic context and some of them had negative attitudes toward sociocultural aspects of English language. Attitudinal studies can be used to clarify the effects of language perceptions on the proficiency and willingness of the learners to learn a foreign or second language with regard to its sociolinguistic and sociocultural elements

کلیدواژه ها:

attitudes ، Iranian EFL learners ، language perceptions ، sociocultural considerations ، sociolinguistic features