localizing an international english teacher training course for the iranian context: changes and challenges

In order to cater for the ever-increasing demand for learning english, private language institutes have mushroomed across iran. these institutes adopt different policies such as designing their own teacher training course (ttc), following certificate for teaching english to adults (celta) syllabus, or localizing it for the iranian context to train competent english teachers. surprisingly, there exists little research evaluating these ttc s or investigating if localizing celta is an effective strategy for the iranian context. this study aimed to fill this gap by delineating the steps taken by a widely-known iranian language institute in order to localize celta for the iranian context, and secondly to determine if the teachers were satisfied with this localized ttc. data collected through the websites and interviews were subjected to content analysis, that is, open, axial, and selective coding; while the data mined through evaluation questionnaires were analyzed through quantitative descriptive statistics. the findings revealed that the iranian ttc suffered from discrepancies such as unreliable selection of the participants, lack of opportunities for teaching practices, not observing experienced teachers classes, and focusing on received rather than experiential knowledge. these findings are discussed and a number of practical suggestions are offered to improve the iranian ttc.