فاطمه نعمتی

The growing number of learners aspiring to master English as an international language that provides a gateway to join the world of science, business, and technology in the globalization era has been also influential in building expectations in the applicants of higher education in language teaching. This study investigates the imagined community that M.A. students of Teaching English as Foreign Language (TEFL) have envisaged before starting their higher education. Eight TEFL MA students having one-semester experience of studying TEFL and just starting their second semester were interviewed to explore their views about the educational imagined community before attending the program as compared to the real situation they have encountered. The content analysis of interviews revealed that their current experiences were far from their idealized syllabus and job and their images of professors and self-images remained unfulfilled in the realistic situations. They expected to face more practical and innovative teaching methods, especially those that integrated technological advances in teaching process given the rapid development of CALL. They shared the ideal that their imagined community should equip them with enough resources to join the wider language teacher community that requires them to be both up-to-date in modern ways and knowledgeable in their profession. Attending to the imagined educational communities of students who study for a specialization helps higher education policymakers to choose the best educational route for them and give them opportunities to act in their desired way, eventually resulting in the education of more enthusiastic committed trainees.