Iranian EFL Learners' Attitude towards Culture Teaching

Ghazaleh Cheraghpour Samvati, Iran, ID CLEaR2016-345;      In the communicative era, where employing authentic teaching material is the de rigueur, culture plays a paramount role. This paper was an attempt to capture some of EFL learners' attitudes towards culture learning. To this end, a semi-structured interview was conducted among 9 EFL learners, all studying Top Notch as their English textbook. The aspects that were highlighted in the interview were, the importance of 'culture' in studying English and maintaining its balance with linguistic contents; the importance of being culturally literate in different cultures, focusing on whether to accentuate the culture of Inner circle, Outer circle, or the Expanding Circle; participants brief evaluation of Top Notch series on the basis of its focus on the above mentioned cultures and how they felt towards this; and last, the aspects of culture that should be focused on in English language courses.

Key words: Culture, Textbook, World Englishes