English Language Learning as Intercultural Experience

Abstract

Teaching English in higher education entails additional factors and considerations that exemplify the complexity of accounting for the diverse population in modern higher education institutions. In particular, the increasing flow of international students and the employment demands of functioning in multicultural contexts render helping students to develop a critical understating of intercultural relations an important aspect of English language teaching. With the increasing adoption of English as a medium of instruction and its use as a lingua franca in intercultural communication, it is important to structure English education in a way that accounts for intercultural relations both in and outside the university. In addition to the postmodern conceptualizations of interculturality that emphasize the fluidity of culture, language and identity intercultural relations are characterized by power imbalances. That is why this chapter makes a case for the necessity of considering sociopolitical realities in intercultural English language teaching in higher education.