Despite their widespread popularity and rapid growth, the Internet-mediated English educational materials for learners of English as a foreign/second language (FL/SL) have rarely been analyzed in terms of their potential hidden curriculum. Accordingly, the present study aims to address this need through conducting a CDA investigation into some lessons which are randomly selected from an English educational website called “Englishcentral.” Adapting, expanding, and adopting some elements of Van Leeuwen’s (2008) Social Actor Network, the researchers attempt to describe and explain the representation of “Iran” in Englishcentral. Investigating and thematizing the research data revealed that the keyword “Iran” was used in this website to refer to three groups of social actors, namely the Iranian government and officials, Iranian people, and Iranian people and/or government/officials. The way these social actors are associated and dissociated, activated and passivated, personalized and impersonalized creates remarkable findings which give support to the presence of particular hidden agenda in this program.  In all, the results of this study reveal that the Iranian social actors are portrayed unfavorably in Englishcentral, which is an alleged English educational program.

The present study takes Engeström human activity system model (1987, 1999) as a theoretical framework to investigate the CLT-based English curriculum reform in Iran which was initiated in 2013 by the Ministry of Education in public schools. With the premise that human activity is artifact-mediated and goal-directed, activity theory makes it possible to demonstrate the complex and dynamic relationship between various institutional, social, and individual factors by revealing different contradictions that language teachers would experience as they attempt to implement CLT in their classroom contexts.  In addition to 23 language teachers who consisted the main participants of this study, three other groups including 17 teacher directors, 23 students, and 20 parents took part. Document analysis, semi-structured interview, and classroom observation comprised the data collection instruments. The results indicated that despite their optimism about and keen interest in CLT-based reform, Iranian language teachers could not successfully implement CLT due to their inability to successfully resolve the contradictions that emerged in their activity system. These contradictions in turn stemmed from a number of difficulties that emanate from various sources including teachers themselves, students, their parents, school staff, educational system, and the new package. Based on the findings, a number of implications and suggestions are provided for the Iranian curriculum developers, language teachers, parents, and teacher directors.