Contributions of an EIL-Oriented Teacher Training Course to Iranian EFL Teachers’ Conceptions and Practices of ELT[Latin Thesis]

Hoda Torabi

. English is being used internationally for different purposes such as trade, travel, or education. The worldwide spread of this language has created the need for teaching and learning English as an international language. Therefore, the English teachers need to obtain more knowledge about teaching English skills and components according to the principles of EIL so that the students get prepared to communicate with people, from different countries, who have different first languages and various cultural backgrounds. The purpose of the present qualitative study was to explore the EFL teachers’ beliefs and classroom practices regarding the principles of EIL, examine how the assumptions of EIL can be operationalized in a teacher training course, and find out the contributions of such a course to the teachers’ perspectives and practices. To this end, the researcher developed an EIL-oriented teacher training course based on the literature and existing resources on EIL. In addition, as to the data collection, interview questions and observation scheme were designed as instruments of the present study. Eight Iranian English teachers, as information-rich cases who taught elementary to advanced level classes, were picked through criterion sampling and participated in the teacher training course. The whole participants were also interviewed and their classes were observed before and after the teacher training course. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and afterward the interview and observation data were analyzed using thematic analysis. The results of frequency count and descriptive statistic along with the thematic analysis showed that the teachers adopted more positive approach to the principles of EIL and tried to put their knowledge about teaching English skills and component in an EIL-oriented classroom into practice. The findings of the present study offer some implications including familiarizing English teachers with the concept of EIL, running teacher training courses based on principles of EIL in order to enable the teachers to teach English skills for international uses of this language, providing teachers with iii appropriate materials and practical examples putting principles of EIL into practice. This study also suggests some recommendations for further research which are presented at the end of the studEnglish as an international language, teacher training course, culture, English skills, teacher’s beliefs, teachers’ practicesy