THE IMPACT OF CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE ON LISTENING COMPREHENSION

This study tries to investigate the influence of cultural knowledge on developing Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. To this end, a proficiency test was conducted to one hundred and twenty language learners. Ninety of intermediate language learners were chosen based on their scores on a test and randomly assigned to three groups. Every group was exposed to a specific condition as follows: AC (American culture), PC (Persian culture) and CF (culture free).Before any treatment sessions, the same pre-test was administered. After 8 weeks (24 hours) of treatment session with an experienced teacher, to investigate whether or not any changes happened, three groups took a post-test. The result of post-test showed that the performance of groups was different, especially group (AC) which was significantly different from the pre-test. This indicated that the more, participants were exposed to familiarity to cultural knowledge of the language, the more they improved their listening comprehension.