DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURAL AWARENESS IN IRANIAN ENGLISH CLASSES

Abstract

The development of cultural awareness in Iranian high school English classes has been one of the major problems of language learning in Iran. Actually most of our students do not have any clear knowledge about the culture of the people whose language they learn. The fact that as time passes the intercultural communication between this generation of students and the English language communities will become weaker and weaker in future. Their ability to express themselves in the English language fluently after studying English at school for six years seems not to be satisfactory. It seems that it is partly due to the textbooks used, and partly to the kinds of instruction, procedures and techniques used for teaching English as a foreign language at high schools. In this paper the researcher has taken an analytic look at the course objectives and English language textbooks written for the high school students by carefully analyzing the content of high school English textbooks prepared and published by the Ministry of Education in Iran.