فهرست مطالب محمد میثم صفرزاده

Globalization and moving towards an interconnected international community has been facilitated through major changes in the field of technology such as the advancement of digital communications and the continuous transfer of large volumes of data around the world and the advances in the transportation industry for easy and fast transportation of passengers and goods. This globalization has created a level of interaction between people of different nationalities, cultures and ethnicities that is not comparable to the past. Although successful communication in the past has been one of the most important features of an effective social interaction, in recent years, this fruitful communication has become a vital feature. The present study, using a one-of-a-kind questionnaire, investigated Iranian English language teachers’ attitudes toward the phenomenon of language education glocalization for the first time.

The participants of the study had different academic, age, teaching experience, and gender backgrounds. The study was conducted in two phases in the first of which a validated questionnaire was designed and developed. In the second phase, the questionnaire was employed to collect the information regarding the preferential attitudes of the teachers and descriptive statistics was used to analyze the data.

The results of the questionnaire data analysis revealed that the teachers believe that there is no more only American or British English. There are, however, also varieties of English which have their own independent growth and special features according to the needs of their users. Furthermore, they think that the glocal needs of the users must be met in the process of English language education glocalization. Likewise, the teachers are for the idea that language education should not only be at the service of reflecting the native speaker English variety and culture, but it should serve all cultures to play their equal role in intercultural communication.

Helping teachers to find their real role in their profession, the findings of the study increases the perception of language education glocalization leading to a more appropriate education program planning. The results of these studies can inform educators of teachers about their individual abilities and help to design and implement educational programs as well as possible. Access to teachers' attitudes and abilities can also help policymakers and syllabus designers develop and implement instructional materials to better perform their tasks.  

The study aimed at developing a hypothesized model and questionnaire of language glocalization for the first time to accomplish systematic data generation and collection of the teachers’ perceptions regarding the glocalization of language education (LEG) in Iran. Hence, a model was initially hypothesized and the researchers went through scientific phases to generate a reliable and validated LEG questionnaire to test the model. Face validity, content validity and construct validity of the questionnaire were investigated. For exploratory factor analysis, the criterions for the data factorability being met, the researchers ran factor analysis employing Principle Components Analysis (PCA) method resulting in identification of five factors. Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient was used to measure the questionnaire internal consistency. The Cronbach’s Alpha results indicated that the internal consistency was 0.96 for the whole questionnaire, and 0.89, 0.92, 0.88, 0.89, and 0.87 respectively for the five components of LEG as the subscales in the questionnaire. After running exploratory factor analysis, to check whether the questionnaire data fits the hypothesized model of LEG introduced at the beginning of the study, a confirmatory factor analysis was done. Then, the final version of the questionnaire was administered to 270 language teachers to gather the data to feed it to the model to see the extent to which the model fit the data. The results of the study revealed that although the model has been the first one of its kind, it displayed a reasonable degree of reliability and validity as confirmed by the statistical procedures. The developed and validated model and the questionnaire of this study can have many practical applications for Iranian EFL teachers as well as future researches in other contexts.

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is advocated by many applied linguists as a common vehicle to curriculum innovation in many ELT contexts. It represents a change of focus in language teaching from linguistic structures to learners’ need for developing communication skills. In recent years, the Iranian Ministry of Education has introduced the development of a new English curriculum for secondary schools with the aim of establishing the use of communicative activities in language classes. The present study was an attempt to investigate Iranian teachers’ perception of CLT principles and practices through a survey of 75 secondary school teachers in the context of the newly introduced English language curriculum developed based on CLT principles. Based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative data using a semi-structured questionnaire supplemented with interviews with a smaller group of teachers, the results of the survey revealed that a change in classroom arrangements is required before CLT can be practiced in secondary school English classes in Iran. The results also showed that the employment of CLT procedures at the local level is at its beginning stages and might take time to take root. The conclusion is that for the suggested changes in the curriculum to be implemented and realized in English education in Iran, the findings of more comprehensive surveys complemented with observation of teachers’ instructional practices is required to inform the change implementation.

Due to the contemporary interactions in the world shaping the global village،any nation that does not provide a definition of itself by means of its native language and culture would probably lose its identityand fade under the most dominating alien and unfamiliar cultures and civilizations. In this regard، the Supreme Leader of Iran outlined a perspective of Persian language turning it into a global scientific language. The issue has also entered in the upstream documents of the national planning. Considering language a soft technology، this article seeks to investigate the requirements of the realization of this perspective. The study is mostly intended to realistically reorganize the findings of the previous studies. The main finding of the present study is that the preservation of the Persian language thesaurus and its development without considering the digital requirements (including adapting Persian to the computer environments and emphasizing the production of capable computer machine translators) is impossible. Due to the development of the artificial intelligence، cognitive technologies and digital translators، in the future، the access to the scientific contents may not necessarily depend on knowing a dominant foreign language. Although we cannot expect Persian (or any other language) to attain the current position of English in the near future، this does not mean that Persian cannot be considered as a scientific language after about five decades. In other words، our country، due to the science production incentive policies، may reach a position for Iranians to generate a considerable portion of science productions، and consequently، the scientific contents in Persian become considerably sizeable. Thus، the present study aims to provide evidence that prove the mentioned ideal to be attainable. However، the world scientists may not have to acquire Persian to gain access to the science developed by Iranians. At the end of the article، there is an attempt to reflect and summarize the result of the research achievements in a fuzzy cognitive map.