Towards a Harmonized Foreign Language Education Program in Iran: National Policies and English Achievement

Abstract

Foreign language education (FLE) in Iran has experienced many ups and downs in the contemporary history of the country. The national policy documents, however, seem to be able to pave the grounds for introducing a sTable FLE program. The present study, therefore, sheds light on one of the consequences of having contradictory views of English language teaching and will show the relevance of Iranian national policy documents to FLE reform in the country. Analysis of high school English language scores obtained from 438 graduates of a state university of medical sciences indicate that while the correlations between second-grade teacher-made tests, third-grade teacher-made tests and third-grade national examinations are moderate, the magnitude of relationships between these sets of scores and the fourth-grade English language exam scores at high school are weak. The decline in the mean score of fourth-graders at high school and the low correlation reflect the contradictory effects of English teaching in this context. In order to suggest ideas for mitigating such negative effects, the researchers will refer to the results of analyzing the contents of the major national policy documents and discuss implications for harmonizing national FLE.