Zahra Matou - MA in English Language Teaching
M.R. Talebinezhad

Highly significant growth in using English particularly in Asia and beyond that illustrates how globally English is recognized currently. Unfortunately this important matter seems to be being neglected in the Iranian Educational System. In this paper, a review of literature addressed in the subsequent sections, which revealed several definitions of different types of the three most widely used acronyms, ESL(English as second language ), EFL(English as foreign language ) and EIL(English as international language ) in their historical-structural contexts. These labels, which are more the products of history and demography than of linguistic reality concerned with the realities of the changing role of English in today's world. This study demonstrated the referential vagueness and denotative variations. It also presented contexts of situational overlaps regarding the current basis for an ESL/EFL distinction and compared with EIL. Then these issued were discussed in ELT programs in Iran. Finally, the findings demonstrated that English has been learned not for their own sake but as a vehicle for social and economic contacts and for the transmission of ideas

EFL; ESL; EIL; Iran