SOURCE CULTURE, TARGET CULTURE OR INTERCULTURE? IRANIAN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHERS’ PERCEPTION OF CULTURE

The issue of culture as an inevitable element in any language teaching in general and English language teaching in particular merits researchersʹ close attention in any English as a Second Language (ESL) or English as a Foreign language (EFL) context. Since in the present century, the need of teaching and learning English appears quite obvious and necessary, this paper which also has taken this issue for granted, tries to deal with the conflict of cultures between the local and the Center culture as one of the main problems and concerns in teaching and learning English in the Iranian context. Reviewing the three main viewpoints about teaching English language culture, i.e. source culture, target culture, and interculture, the researcher attempted to investigate the ELT teachersʹ perception on the issue of which culture should be presented in the EFL classroom. Based on the interviews taken from both experts and novice teachers in some English language institutes and universities, a questionnaire was devised and their perceptions about teaching culture in the classroom were acquired. The results showed that although some teachers favored both source and target values in language teaching, most of them emphasized the intercultural view to language teaching and the importance of training interculturally competent students to be able to understand the cultural concepts of perception, thinking, feeling, and acting. Teachers may also use the effective culturally appropriate techniques to allow students to observe and explore cultural interactions from their own perspectives to enable them to find their own voices in the language speech community.