Pedagogical Practice for Integrating the Intercultural in Language Teaching and Learning

Languages education is increasingly emphasising the place of the development of intercultural abilities in the teaching and learning of languages, and such requirements are now common in curriculum documents around the world. This change in emphasis has posed some challenges for the ways in which language teachers work. For some teachers, language and culture have been seen as separate areas of teaching and learning and the focus on the intercultural is seen as a movement away from language. For others, however, language and culture are fundamentally integrated and the focus on the intercultural represents a way of refocusing language teaching and learning to reflect this integration. Such an integrated approach means that the intercultural can be included in the languages curriculum, without a movement away from a language focus. This paper will examine ways in which language curriculum and practice can be understood from an intercultural perspective focusing on the intercultural while maintaining language learning at the heart of the curriculum.