The need for language programs to attend to the development of intercultural understanding and intercultural communication has long been a commonplace in language education.
Recent thinking in language education has argued that language education needs to do more than make claims the contribution language education makes to the intercultural and to integrate the intercultural explicitly in language programs.
The integration of the intercultural involves more than an attempt to introduce additional elements in language education and involves a true integration of language, culture and the intercultural in language pedagogy.
The issues that confront the implementation of intercultural language teaching and learning involve more than identifying practices that can be described as intercultural, they involve rather the ways that we understand what language, culture and learning are in the context of language teaching.

For further information:

Ms France Meyer (CAIS, CASS)
E france.meyer@anu.edu.au