Teaching English for Intercultural Spoken Communication

Abstract

Communicative approaches to teaching English can too easily marginalise or ignore culture and intercultural perspectives, assuming (implicitly or explicitly) that learners aspire to a goal of something approaching idealized English native speaker competence. More than ever, this is a problematic assumption; the linguistic landscape for English is rapidly evolving as English becomes a global lingua franca for interaction between people from different first language backgrounds. This shift raises questions as to what communicative norms, if any, should form the basis for teaching and curricula planning, and how learners can be best prepared to communicate via English with other non-native speakers. In response to such issues, in this chapter I propose a set of principles to guide the teaching of English for intercultural spoken communication. I begin by providing a brief outline of the field of intercultural languages education and the origins of the principles. I then outline the theoretical basis and rationale for each principle and suggest ways in which teachers can draw on the principles to cultivate the practice of intercultural communicative language teaching.

Appendix: The Six Principles for Intercultural Communicative Language Teaching (iCLT) (Newton et al. 2010)

Intercultural communicative language teaching and learning (iCLT):

• 1. Integrates language and culture from the beginning;

• 2. Engages learners in genuine social interaction;

• 3. Encourages and develops an exploratory and reflective approach to culture and culture-in-language;

• 4. Fosters explicit comparisons and connections between languages and cultures;

• 5. Acknowledges and responds appropriately to diverse learners and learning contexts;

• 6. Emphasizes intercultural communicative competence rather than native-speaker competence.