Learning Culture or Language: an examination of Iranian EFL Students’ conceptions of learning different cultures in high school English courses

In Iran’s high schools, when students start to study in grade ۷, they start English language as arequired course and student start to learn this language by using books compiled and published byIran’s ministry of education. This study examines to what extent students are interested inimproving their linguistic, linguistic and cultural, and cultural knowledge. ۲۶۷ high school students(۱۶۲ females, ۱۰۵ males) who were living and studying in shiraz, participated in this study.(۵۵.۸%) of them were studying in science, (۲۴.۷%) of them in Math, and (۱۹.۴%) in Humanities.In order to investigate what type of knowledge (Linguistic, Cultural, Linguistic and cultural)students are interested to learn in EFL classrooms, a questionnaire which was based on Mackeyand Gass (۲۰۰۵), Dorneyi (۲۰۰۳), and Shedivy’s (۲۰۰۴) survey, was conducted and distributedamong learners. The results of the study showed that students were more likely to acquire andimprove their linguistic knowledge rather than cultural information. Moreover, they declared thatgaining cultural knowledge can have impact on improving their reading skills such as vocabularyknowledge, text comprehension and to have information about different topics. Additionally, theydeclared that cultural understanding has major impact on students’ communication skills andability. Further consequences and discussions are explained in the study

Keywords:

English language acquisition , Linguistic knowledge , Cultural information , Linguistic and cultural knowledge , English language curriculum