This wide-ranging survey of issues in intercultural language teaching and learning covers everything from core concepts to program evaluation, and advocates a fluid, responsive approach to teaching language that reflects its central role in fostering intercultural understanding. Includes coverage of theoretical issues defining language, culture, and communication, as well as practice-driven issues such as classroom interactions, technologies, programs, and language assessment Examines systematically the components of language teaching: language itself, meaning, culture, learning, communicating, and assessments, and puts them in social and cultural context Features numerous examples throughout, drawn from various languages, international contexts, and frameworks Incorporates a decade of in-depth research and detailed documentation from the authors’ collaborative work with practicing teachers Provides a much-needed addition to the sparse literature on intercultural aspects of language education

This volume responds to the growing need for intercultural approaches to teaching and learning languages. The central premise is that the aim of intercultural language teaching and learning is to foster effective communication and effective learning in spaces between cultures in order to prepare learners for global citizenship, but that the corresponding models and methods must emerge from the bottom-up in order to meet the needs of each unique context. The book offers a collection of successful experiences rooted in praxis. It shares the activities, methods, models, and approaches which have been developed within specific contexts. Thus, it offers an example of how to adopt an “intercultural perspective” in teaching and learning. The editors and contributors share the conviction that the experiences detailed here can be informative to the realities of all readers in the same way that their own practices have been informed by others.

This book provides a contemporary and critical examination of the theoretical and pedagogical impact of Michael Byram’s pioneering work on intercultural communicative competence and intercultural citizenship within the field of language education and beyond. The chapters address important theoretical and empirical work on the teaching, learning, and assessment of intercultural learning, and highlight how individual language educators and communities of practice enact intercultural learning in locally appropriate ways. The book offers comprehensive, up-to-date and accessible knowledge for researchers, teachers, teacher-trainers and students.

Eva Alcón Soler Maria Pilar Safont Jordà Universitat Jaume I, Spain The main purpose of the present book is to broaden the scope of research on the development of intercultural communicative competence. Bearing this purpose in mind, English learners are considered as intercultural speakers who share their interest for engaging in real life communication. According to Byram and Fleming (1998), the intercultural speaker is someone with knowledge of one or more cultures and social identities, and who enjoys discovering and maintaining relationships with people from other cultural backgrounds, although s/he has not been formally trained for that purpose. Besides, possessing knowledge of at least two cultures is the case of many learners in bilingual or multilingual communities. In these contexts, the objective of language learning should then focus on developing intercultural competence, which in turn may involve promoting language diversity while encouraging English as both a means and an end of instruction (see Alcón, this volume). This is the idea underlying the volume, which further sustains Kramsch’s argument (1998) against the native/ non-native dichotomy. Following that author, we also believe that in a multilingual world where learners may belong to more than one speech community, their main goal is not to become a native speaker of English, but to use this language as a tool for interaction among many other languages and cultures.

Intercultural language education has redefined the modern languages agenda in Europe and North America. Now intercultural learning is also beginning to impact on English Language Teaching. This accessible book introduces teachers of EFL to intercultural language education by describing its history and theoretical principles, and by giving examples of classroom tasks.

This book presents a detailed account of a self-study in which the author considers why a developmental perspective matters in language learning within an intercultural orientation, and how teachers of languages might understand and attend to this notion in their work. The discussion is based on the author’s experience as a teacher-researcher and traces aspects of teachers’ work from planning, teaching and mediating, to assessing and judging evidence of student learning and development over time. This book is grounded in a praxis view of language teaching and learning and will be of interest to other language teachers, pre-service teachers, teacher trainers and applied linguists.

Developing Intercultural Language Materials puts intercultural competence at the forefront of the learning agenda. It unpicks its underlying theory and provides a framework and practical methodologies for practitioners, providing a toolkit for them to create their own learning materials and design their own classroom activities to nurture intercultural competence. This innovative book showcases some of the new ways language teachers in practice successfully integrate this essential skill into their curricula. Directions for further research, pulling out recurring threads in this book, such as critical pedagogy and cultural sensibility, offer opportunities for professional development. This research‐grounded and action‐oriented text is essential reading for language and cultural studies practitioners who want to help their students thrive in today’s multicultural world.

The topic of this book is in congruence with the current trends in foreign language education worldwide. On the one hand, it tackles the concept and implementation of intercultural language teaching; on the other, it analyses the circumstances in which information and communication technology may be utilised in the contemporary EFL classroom. Both intercultural teaching and Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) have been promoted by national/international educational documents in Europe, the USA and Asia, and endorsed by international organisations, including the Council of Europe and UNESCO. This book constitutes a pioneering attempt at establishing the role of ICT in English language and culture teaching within the Polish education system. However, the research instruments used within both research modules are applicable to other education systems worldwide, while the results obtained have implications for intercultural and computer-assisted language education in international contexts. The research results presented in the book highlight to the broad EFL profession a wide range of issues relating to the use of ICT in the foreign language classroom. They also offer materials writers, software designers and EFL teachers criteria with which to evaluate the intercultural component of CALL software.

Many educators aim to engage students in deeply meaningful learning in the language classroom, often facing challenges to connect the students with the culture of the language they are learning. This book aims to demonstrate that substantial intercultural learning can and does occur in the modern language classroom, and explores the features of the classroom that support meaningful culture-in-language-learning. The author argues that transformative modern language education is intimately tied to a view of language learning as an engagement in meaning-making activity, or semiotic practice. The empirical evidence presented is analyzed and then linked to both the theorizing of culture-in-language-teaching and to practical concerns of teaching.

The history of "language teaching" is shot through with methods and approaches to language learning - most recently with "communicative language teaching" - but this book demonstrates that a more differentiated and richer understanding of learning a foreign language is both necessary and desirable. Languages and cultures are interlinked and interdependent and their teaching and learning should be too. Learning another language is part of a complex process of learning and understanding other people's ways of life, ways of thinking and socio-economic experience