Comparing the Transcultural Approach of "English as an International Language" with the Cognitive Approach of "English as a Foreign Language"

The purpose of current research is to compare the transcultural approach of "English as an international language" with the cognitive approach of "English as a foreign language". The research method was comparative-analytical and the data collection was based on documentary method by using the Boolean approach to search for primary and secondary sources. The researchers used the philosophical analysis research method to analyze the data, and the four-step Bereday’s method to present the results. The first finding indicates that the cognitive tradition in language teaching takes precedence over the transcultural tradition in terms of time. The second finding revealed that the cognitive approach of "English as a second language" is still influenced by the intellectuals of those philosophers such as Descartes, Locke and Hume, while the transcultural approach benefits from the theories of various epistemological and interdisciplinary fields. Another finding emphasizes that the transcultural approach in explaining the necessity of learning English as an international language used important theoretical structures such as conceptualization and cultural schemas to show that policymakers and curriculum planners should not look at English language education from the limited intellectual realm of dividing languages ​​into “first language and second language". Based on these findings, it is suggested to Iranian curriculum planners to break from the cognitive approach and consider the transcultural approach of "teaching English as an international language" in the compilation of upper-level documents and educational policies, because the principles governing the transcultural approach are more consistent with the realities of life in the new millennium.