Examining the Relationship between cultural identity and attitude of high school students of Tehran toward learning English

It is essential for teachers, especially foreign language teachers, to understand the relationship between culture, language, and identity. These three interrelated categories construct both a teacher’s attitude and that of a student. This study aims to examine the relationship between cultural identity and attitude of high school students of Tehran toward learning English. This research also intended to examine the sense of cultural identity of high school student boys and girls. To do so, 180 secondary school students (88 girls and 92 boys) of four districts of Tehran (First, Fifth, Twelfth, Eighteenth) were chosen through random cluster sampling. Then, the data was gathered through Gardner’s short-form questionnaire of motivation and attitude toward English language learning, and cultural identity questionnaire. The questionnaires distributed online among the students. The results of the statistical analysis revealed that there was a weak negative correlation between the two variables of cultural identity and the attitude of students toward learning foreign language. It means that there was a weak negative relationship between increasing cultural knowledge of the Iranian adolescents (16–18-year-old) toward Iranian cultural identity and their attitude toward English language learning. The results also revealed that there was not any significant difference between the two groups of boys and girls in the sense of cultural identity. The findings of this study would be helpful to everybody in charge of teaching, especially English language teaching, the designers of learning materials, English teachers, and the instructors responsible for training English teachers.