THE ATTITUDES OF IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS TOWARD CULTURAL ISSUES IN WESTERN-BASED TEXTBOOKS

The current paper presents the findings of a survey study regarding the attitudes of Iranian EFL learners toward Western-based materials. The rationale for conducting this research refers to the recent concerns of Ayatollah Khamenei (2012, 2013, and 2014) about the spread of Western-based social sciences. In line with the objective of the study, a researcher- made questionnaire with three components was developed and distributed among 220 institute EFL learners and 200 university EFL students. The questionnaire covered the following areas: a. linguistic purposes of materials, b. the incorporation of target culture and c. contradiction between target culture and Islamic values. One-way between subjects ANOVA as well as bar graphs were employed to analyze the data. The findings indicated that the attitudes of Iranian EFL learners toward ELT textbooks is totally positive and the degree of such positive attitudes increases with their level of proficiency or the amount of exposure they have with the target culture. In other words, Iranian EFL learners gradually and subconsciously get assimilated into the system of thoughts and behaviors of the target language

کلیدواژه ها:

Attitude ، EFL ، Culture ، Western-based Materials