Investigating Iranian University English teachers and Students attitudes toward lingua franca approach principles

In spite of numerous studies in EIL field on lingua franca approach, it is still one of the less explored areas of research especially with respect to university teachers and students perspectives toward its principles. To bridge the gap, 20 university English teachers and students attitudes toward the lingua franca approach principles was examined through using a perception questionnaire and semi-structured interview. The principles were adopted from Kirckpatric (2014) to ASEN context where the native speaker is absent and English is used as a lingua franca. The collected data were quantitatively analyzed to draw the possible patterns in the participants attitudes and perceptions. The results of the data collected from the questionnaire revealed that most student and teacher participants had positive attitude toward most of the principles of lingua franca approach. The in-depth analysis of the interview data indicated that the negative attitude of both groups of the participants toward some lingua franca principles was because of the very still present native speaker norms and also its ideology in teaching English to non native speakers of English and the way the teachers themselves had been trained in educational system of English learning. The study concluded that the EIL context welcomes most of the lingua franca principles; however, EIL needs different sets of assumptions to quench ELT needs as such.