Introducing Culturally-Adaptive English Language Pedagogy (CELP): Integrating Critical Cultural Awareness through the ‘little-c’ Culture in Iran’s EFL Curriculum

In teaching a foreign language (FL), some cultural specificities (defined under the rubric of ‘little-c culture’) may totally conflict with the cultural norms of the learners’ first language (L1). To prevent such imminent problems, this paper recommended that the FL syllabus be designed in a way so as to equip learners with an intimate knowledge of the target language culture, and that language teachers should develop consciousness toward learners’ cultural fragility and explicitly make full use of a culturally relevant FL pedagogy in a procedural, technical fashion which we shall refer to as Culturally-adaptive English Language Pedagogy (CELP). Such a syllabus would help learners not only to welcome the legitimacy of differences between the two cultures, but also to make their own cultural values and practices more explicit, enfranchising learners the decision on what aspects of cultural practices they want to embrace. We address three questions of what (the characterization of CELP), why (the significance of CELP) and how (the implementation of CELP) in the peculiar EFL context of Iran.