Global neighbourhood or imposed closeness? Impacts of computer mediated intercultural communication on the role of culture in English language teaching

Abstract

Many educational practices in foreign language teaching and learning still seem to be controlled by an essentialist view of culture, in which the students, their abilities, and learning attitudes are characterized by problematic and/or imaginary stereotypes of their religious, ethnical, and national cultures. The new tools and devices for communication provided by the internet have contributed to the increase of communicative practices between individuals of different cultures and the use of the English language among non-native speakers, something which also tends to cause impacts on the way we understand and teach culture in the learning of such a language. This paper aims at clarifying the view of culture present in the concepts of communicative competence and intercultural competence, and discussing the need for reformulating the cultural component in language teaching and learning, so that it aims to explore the complexity from the pragmatism of intercultural meetings in contemporaneity.