extramural english: iranian high-school students’ attitudes toward learning and using english outside the classroom

This survey examines students use, attitudes and preferences regarding ee (external english). ee is defined as english activities that learners participate in outside of regular language classes such as reading books, reading newspapers and magazines, watching tv, watching films, surfing the internet, playing video games, listening to music, etc. the results of this study are based on data collected from iranian high school english learners over a year. information on students ee activities was collected through a quantitative questionnaire containing both multiple-choice and open-ended questions.the results showed that iranian high school students participated in various extracurricular activities. the most frequent extracurricular activity students did was watching english movies. the second most popular extracurricular activity was watching tv programs in english with persian subtitles.in addition, most language skills are developed through exposure to english in extracurricular activities. these are, for example, understanding spoken english, speaking english, understanding english vocabulary, and understanding written english. however, when it comes to written language and english grammar, students have been shown to develop these language skills more effectively in language classes than in free time.