摘要：Today, global issues (GI), known as a well-established branch of language teaching field in general and English language teaching in particular, has gained increasing interest among the teaching community. In Sampedro and Hillyard’ s (2004) terms, global issues can no longer be dismissed as the “out there”, but they are very much “in here” too and can no longer be safely ignored. Matsuda (2006) also points out since at present learners want to become effective users of English in the international context, some awareness of global cultures and issues needs to be fostered. Pass all doubt, in a globalizing world, when every corner of the planet is being affected by the phenomenon of globalization as an inevitable reality of the modern society, the need to understand other cultures, societies as well as the challenges and problems which we are faced with seems increasingly important. Certainly, one of the primary aims of language learning and especially English language which is known as a global and international language is facilitating the communication among the cultures and peoples. Since GI is a new approach to foreign language teaching and aims to enable learners to efficiently acquire and use a foreign language while empowering them with the knowledge, skills and commitment required by world citizens for the solution of global problems, using this approach can effectively integrate a global perspective into classroom instruction through a focus on international themes (see Cates 2000, Dyer and Bushell, 1996). In fact, this paper not only aims at introducing the reasons for introducing global issues as an important theme to English textbook development, but also attempts to highlight the applications of GI for English language classrooms with a specific reference to the Iranian society as an EFL context.
关键词：global issues; textbook development; English language teaching
