EFL teachers’ attitudes toward accent and culture in light of EIL: The case of Iranian public schools and private institutes

Figures & data

Table 1. The reliability and normal distribution of questionnaire data

	Accent	Culture
Cronbach’s alpha	0.77	0.81
KS sig.	0.65	0.53

Table 2. Attitudes toward EIL-related accent and culture: public versus private teachers

	Public teachers		Private teachers
	M	SD	M	SD	t	df	Sig. (two -tailed)	d
Accent	3.13	0.53	3.21	0.50	0.34	104	0.73	0.15
Culture	3.25	0.70	3.25	0.54	0.02	104	0.98	0.00

Note: M = mean; SD = standard deviation.

Table

Items Accent	1	2	3	4	5
Accent
(1) It is OK if English language learners speak English with a Persian accent.
(2) English language learners should follow closely one of the accents that is spoken by native people in English-speaking countries (e.g. the US, the UK, Australia, etc.).
(3) English language learners’ foreign accent should be acceptable to native English speakers from English-speaking countries.
(4) I cannot tolerate my English learners’ foreign accent which is different from the one spoken by native people in one of the English-speaking countries.
(5) English language learners’ accent should be evaluated based on that of people who speak English as their first language.
(6) English language learners should eradicate all traces of their foreign accents.
(7) As long as English language learners’ language is comprehensible to people from other countries, they do not need to be corrected.
(8) As an English language instructor, in the classroom I try to use an accent spoken in one of the English-speaking countries.
(9) The only acceptable accents are the ones spoken by native people in one of the English-speaking countries.
Culture
(10) English language learners should gain information about customs of English-speaking countries such as Thanksgiving and Halloween.
(11) English language learners should adopt the cultures of English-speaking countries.
(12) English language learners should follow the way of greeting, requesting, inviting, refusing and so on used by native people in English-speaking countries.
(13) English language cannot be separated from the dominant culture of English-speaking countries.
(14) Iranian culture and customs should be included in teaching English to Iranian English language learners.
(15) English language instructors should introduce English language learners to the cultural norms of communities in which English is used as the first language.
(16) As an English instructor, in the classroom I put emphasis on the culture of people in English-speaking countries rather than the Iranian culture.
(17) If English language learners want to learn English perfectly, they need to practice culture and customs of people in English-speaking countries.