Culture and Interculture: What are we talking about? Challenges for the ELT Community

Abstract

Talking about culture in the field of teaching foreign languages is not a new topic, but talking about interculture and interculturality is a subject that is now gaining a lot of interest in the field of ELT. Especially in the last two decades we have witnessed the growth of publications in this regard. We find all kinds of publications, but we are still having seeing the same fundamental questions that become relevant in these times of change: what we teach, who we teach it to, why we teach it, and how we teach it. These questions have always been relevant for language teachers, but today they have become even more meaningful since we are living in different times, times marked by unexpected political changes, strong economic pressures, and an unreasonable need to homogenize and standardize all the processes of teaching and learning. We must think collectively from new (postmodern) paradigms, empower ourselves, and begin to change our pedagogical practices. The aim of this paper is to share reflections on what foreign language teaching should be and how we should be thinking about culture and interculturality in our classrooms. This is an invitation to think about the need to interculturalize the teaching of the foreign language.