Investigating the Factors Affecting the Problems of EFL Teaching & Learning in Middle Schools in Iran

This study aimed to invesitgate those factors which influence the problems of EFL teaching/learning and to figure out which factor has the most influence on the problems. The participants were 42 English teachers and 681 students. The instruments used for this study were two modified likert-scale questionnaires (with the Cronbach Alpha reliabilites of .837 and .833 respectively) containing three factors called teacher, learner, and textbook. The above two groups were randomly selected from Lenjan county and Isfahan city in Iran based on uneven distribution. The results showed that the textbook and teacher had the most effect on the problems; those which were related to the textbook were, for instance, the materials in the English textbook are not related, there is no use of poems or comics in presenting the materials, and those related to teachers were, for example, the teachers do not attach the same importance to the English skills, they usually do not use educational aids. Also it was tried to find out whether there was a relationship between some of the teachers and students’ variables and the results revealed that there was a relationship between the teachers social and individual and their teaching practices and between the learners family, mental, and economic status and their learning process. At the end, some limitations and suggestions for future research are provided.

Keywords:

Middle schools , EFL teaching/learning , Problems of EFL teaching/learning , Schoolteacher , Middle school learner , English Textbook