THE ROOTS AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE DISCREPANCY BETWEEN THE STATE POLICY AND THE SOCIETAL ATTITUDES YO ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING IN THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to reveal the nature of Iran’s English teaching policy, status of this language and extent of effectiveness of its teaching within the period of 1979-2020. The study is carried out on two levels: the first is concerning the state’s policies and another one – he people’s attitudes. The state’s language policy is accomplished through an analysis of the content of education documents of the IRI and the English language teaching textbooks employed in the education system of the Islamic Republic of Iran. To find out Iranian people’s attitude to the English language, a survey on 472 participants randomly sampled from undergraduate students from four state universities was carried out. The conclusion is that there is an evident gap between the Iranian Islamic political leadership and the people’s attitude to English language in the modern Iranian society and its teaching in their educational establishments.