English Teaching Practices and Intercultural Issues

Abstract

Saying that English has become a language of global communication has become a truism. Some of us may wonder: Why English? Why not another language? The reasons that brought about its status as a lingua franca are many, but the main ones have to do with the growth of the British Empire and its expansion as a colonial power, England’s economic development as a result of the Industrial Revolution and America’s growth as an economic and scientific power in the post-war era. Communication in English has expanded to multiple settings that include native-to-native, native to nonnative and nonnative to nonnative interactions. As a result, the new role of English as a language of international communication shared by people with different national and cultural backgrounds has brought to the fore discussions regarding the neat relationship between a particular language and a particular culture, which was for a long time one of the central tenets of foreign language education. Thus, the concept of one language has been challenged by the multilingual nature of English in various countries, which brought about the concept of new Englishes. The idea of one culture, on the other hand, has been challenged by the multinational and multicultural nature of the English speaking community, spread all over the globe. The article examines the global spread of English and discusses its implications for teaching practices, which need to cater for the dimension of intercultural communication set against global issues of standardization and intelligibility and local issues connected to a specific social, cultural and educational context. The analysis is based both on the theoretical issues dealt with in the literature and on the author’s own experience as a teacher of English in Romania and abroad.