Rethinking of Culture in Iran’s Language-in- Education Policy

The interconnection between language learning and culture is highly complex inasmuch as the purposes of teaching foreign languages have greatly changed from increasing linguistic knowledge and, later, communicative competence to intercultural communicative competence nowadays. Despite the well-established place of culture in foreign language teaching and learning contexts researchers, policy makers, and language educators invariably fret about the role of culture in foreign language teaching curricula (Byram, 2010; Byrnes, 2010). This paper investigates the implications of intercultural learning materials for foreign language curricula in Iran.

Keywords:

Intercultural competence , language education policy , multiculturalism