Developing Meta-cultural Competence in Teaching English as an International Language

Abstract

In this chapter, I explore a Cultural Linguistics approach to teaching English as an International Language (EIL). In particular, the chapter focuses on the development of meta-cultural competence among students in the EIL classroom. EIL is a newly emerged area of study in the field of Applied Linguistics that offers students a new perspective on the English language and focuses on the importance of developing intercultural awareness and intercultural communication competence. An EIL classroom exposes students to the diversity of the English language in a variety of intra- and international contexts, and it prepares students for operating in linguistically and culturally diverse social and professional contexts. ‘Meta-cultural competence’ is ‘a competence that enables interlocutors to communicate and negotiate their cultural conceptualisations during the process of intercultural communication’, and it comprises three major components including ‘variation awareness’, ‘explication strategy’ and ‘negotiation strategy’. In this chapter, I propose a number of principles for developing meta-cultural competence. In addition, I take EIL programme units including ‘Language and Globalization’, ‘Exploring English as an International Language’, ‘Writing across Cultures’ and ‘Language and Intercultural Communication’ as examples and analyse how principles can be applied to the EIL classroom. Towards the end of the chapter, I explore pedagogical implications of developing meta-cultural competence for teaching EIL.