A Comparative Study of TEFL and ET Official Standards in Terms of Bloom's Revised Cognitive Taxonomy

Iran's national curriculum standards represent the guiding blueprints which provide direction for instruction and assessment nationwide. iran's state university curriculum standards were designed by the ministry of science, research and technology to provide a frame of reference and guidance for the instructional materials used and decisions made by university instructors. using a widely accepted measure of describing cognitive processes, that is, bloom's revised taxonomy (brt) of educational objectives, this paper aimed at comparatively investigating iran's b.a. state curriculum standards of teaching english as a foreign language (tefl) and english translation (et). the standards pertaining to tefl and et fields were content analyzed in terms of bloom's revised taxonomy by using a detailed checklist developed based on the respective classification of cognitive objectives. the findings showed that there were slight differences between two fields in terms of critical thinking skills and that lowerorder cognitive skills were more prevalent than higher-order ones. furthermore, english translation standards pertained to critical cognitive skills in general and evaluation and creation in particular to a larger extent. results of this study have implications for policy makers, curriculum designers, material developers and instructors involved in language education.