Farnaz Sahebkheir - PhD, Assistant Professor of TEFL, Department of English Language Teaching, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran

The purpose of this article is to investigate the effect of including materials related to local tourism as a cultural issue on improving English language learning. Most of the English language curriculum is about foreign culture and tourism, while the inclusion of content related to Iranian culture and tourism can increase students' general knowledge about their country and the interest in learning the language due to the attractiveness of studying about local tourism will be increased. In this study, 80 students who were studying general language at the Islamic Azad University of Tabriz were selected. There were 40 students in each group. For one group, non-tourist English materials were used, but for the other, English teaching materials from the researcher's own book, which is in the field of Tabriz tourism in English, were used. The result of the research showed that the group that used language teaching related to tourism surpassed the other group that used normal materials not related to Iranian tourism. This research is a method for the involvement of the private sector, especially the country's education sector, in promoting the development of local tourism and increasing interest in teaching English with a focus on local tourism as cultural issues.

Cultural Issues, English language Achievement, EFL language learning, local Tourism