Correct or Incorrect Language: A Case of Iranian EFL Teachers

Abstract

Research on teacher attitudes toward language and cultural differences has revealed that teachers form negative stereotypes of students with non-standard dialects (Munstermann, 1989). They consider dialect differences as deficiency in language learning, or sloppy pronunciation. Teacher’s attitude toward the students is important in that it creates the classroom atmosphere and affects the way language is taught to the students. The immediate goal of the present study is to investigate EFL teachers’ attitude toward dialect differences in Iran. It further investigates the roles that the variables like teachers’ gender, teachers’ years of teaching experience, school location and the students’ ethnic background play in forming the teachers’ attitude toward dialect variations. To this end, forty Iranian EFL teachers were randomly selected from nine different public high schools. To collect data, modified version of Hoover et al. (1996) Questionnaire was administered. The data were analyzed using simple frequency and percentages. The findings revealed that %71 of the teachers were sensitive toward varieties in dialect and considered them as forms of language and only %14 viewed them as language learning deficiency. The study has some implications for language teaching and material development.