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What c u l t ure? Which c u l t ure?Cross-cultural factors in languagelearningLuke Prodromou

The 'cultural background in language teaching has, for a number ofreasons, recently moved to the foreground: there is renewed interest insubjects as varied as the politics of national language policy, sexism in EFL,and the ideology of textbooks and dictionaries. Broadly speaking, there hasbeen a shift in emphasis in course design from a pre-occupation with formto an interest in content. This article describes the results of a surveydesigned to elicit the views ofstudents on what language teaching shouldbe about. It tests a number of hypotheses expressed by a variety of writersin previous articles in this journal: the importance or otherwise of 1bilingual, bicultural teachers; 2 native-speaker models of English; 3 thecultural content of English lessons in a context where English is a foreignrather than a second language.1

The importance The burgeoning bibliography on cross-cultural matters in languageof English teaching is a symptom of wider social, political, and technologicaldevelopments and in particular the increased mobility of people, andtherefore of contact between people, brought about by modemcommunications, electronic media, and international organizations. Thus,there is potential for greater harmony or greater conflict. There is also anincreasing awareness of a common global destiny, highlighted by nuclearand environmental disasters of an alarming variety.English, therefore, as the foremost medium of internationalcommunication at the present time, is called upon to mediate a wholerange of cultural and cross-cultural concepts, to a greater degree than inthe past. The international dimension of English language teaching is notonly becoming difficult to ignore, but offers ELT a potentially moresignificant role than traditional ethnocentric views of the language as apeculiarly Anglo-Saxon entity would have allowed.

The historical In spite of surface differences, the concept of culture implicit or explicit incontext: trivial most ELT methods and materials until recently, has been predominantly

pursuits monocultural and ethnocentric; the content of such materials has beencriticized for not engaging the students personality to any significantextent. The grammar-translation approach was an easy target forcriticisms of cultural triviality, given its obsession, in the early stages oflearning, with made-up sentences designed to illustrate the parts of speechELT Journal Volum e 46/1 January 1992 Oxford Univ ersit y Press 1992 39

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to the detriment of syntax or meaning. Thus, direct methodists such asSweet poke fun at examples of the pen of my aunt variety with the firstprize for meaning-less triviality going to a gem such as:

the philosopher pulled the lower jaw of the hen(quoted by Howatt, 1984: 145)

However, if we turn to direct method materials themselves, whether intheir early or later - situational - versions, we find greater sense than ingrammar-translation materials, but little that is culturally challenging orinspiring. Classroom culture (pupils, pens, chalk, and chairs) gives ussuch familiar examples as:

Youre standing up. What are you doing?Are you the first pupil or the last? etc.

(Palmer, 1940: 64-66)The real world provides descriptive examples and general truths suchas:

Does a horse pull a cart? Yes, it does. What pulls a cart? A horse does.etc.

(Palmer, 1940: 64,77)The audio-lingualists of the 1950s and 1960s claimed to place English inthe cultural context of modem Britain or the USA, but their notion ofculture is rarely more than superficial. This seems inherent in a methodwhich so dogmatically downgraded lexical meaning in favour ofstructural form; the contexts are a pre-text for language forms and lead tothe blandness of:We have set all the narratives in England. We provide, where

appropriate short notes on the cultural background in which Jillian andMartin live , . . They have - we hope - something in common withmany young, educated, classless people in many larger cities all overthe world.

(Barnett et al., 1968: 23)In the communicative models put forward as an alternative tostructuralism, cross-cultural content is not given explicit priority: peopleinvite, apologize, make requests, and so on in London, Bristol, orCambridge. Wilkins concept of authentic material confirms the mono-cultural limits of early functionalism: by this is meant materials whichwere originally directed at the native-speaking audience. (Wilkins,1976: 79).

The survey: In suggesting that the cultural content of previous approaches to ELT hashypotheses we been trivial, I am making certain assumptions about the importance of

live by content in ELT materials and implicitly the kind of content which weshould be promoting. In the second part of this article, I would like toreport the results of a classroom survey designed to test some of theseassumptions and others, which have been made by recent writers oncultural content in language teaching.Luke Prodromou0

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My survey sought to elicit students reactions to the following fourhypotheses:1 The importance of the cultural background.2 The importance of the cultural foreground.3 The importance of a cross-cultural understanding and multi-cultural

diversity.4 The importance of English language teaching as education,There is, of course, overlap in the four approaches, but each of the writersI quote highlights one feature rather than another.Hypothesis 1: The importance of the cultural backgroundValette (1986) expresses the first hypothesis:

For the classroom teacher, cultural goals may be divided into fourcategories: developing a greater awareness of and a broader knowledgeabout the target culture; acquiring a command of the etiquette of thetarget culture; understanding differences between the target cultureand the students culture; and understanding the values of the targetculture. (Valette, 1986; see also Brown, 1990, who argues for theimportance of cultural knowledge in interpreting texts appropriately.)

It is important to bear in mind that Valette is writing in the context ofEnglish as a second language in the United States, where the learner maywell be seeking to become integrated into the life of the community. It isoften claimed, as a kind of collorary of this position, that the successfullearner is one who has a positive attitude towards the target culture (seeSvanes, 1988). But my question is: How applicable are theseassumptions to a context where English is a foreign language?Hypothesis 2: The importance of the cultural foregroundIt is in the context of English as a foreign rather than second language thatCem and Margaret Alptekin, writing about Turkey, feel that local culturemay, regrettably, be submerged into the dominant culture of the foreignlanguage. They question the desirability of identifying the learning ofEnglish with the culture of the native speaker, and counter-propose theuse of local varieties of English. Implicit in this position is the desirabilityof bilingual/bicultural teachers of English as a foreign language.(Alptekin and Alptekin, 1984: 14; see also Rampton, 1990, who questionsthe supremacy of the native speaker at a time when world English is amosaic of many non-native - and nativized - varieties.)Hypothesis 3: The importance of cross-cultural understanding andmulticultural diversityNo-one involved in teaching English is likely to argue for cross-culturalmis-understanding, but some may question the relative emphasis to begiven to cross-cultural as opposed to target or local culture components incourse design. Robinson (1985) believes in the importance of developingcultural versatility to help learners meet the demands of an increasinglymulticultural world; the cultural background approach is criticized forW hat culture? W hich culture? 41

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its implicitly alienating effect on the learner: Cultural instruction doesnot usually build bridges between the home and target culture . . .students are asked to role-play and imitate the target behaviour rather thansynthesise it with their own experience (Robinson, 1985: 100). Robinsontherefore proposes a multilingual/multicultural model of education ratherthan a bilingual/bicultural one.Hypothesis 4: The importance of English language teaching as educationThe view that ELT has for long been practised in an educational vacuum isexpressed by Brumfit (1980), Cook (1983), and Abbott (1987). Abbottsfocus, building on Cooks work, is on interesting content: Currentviews of language teaching are highly instrumental and have led to thecreation of speech oriented syllabuses . . . much more thought is neededon what the aims and content of school EFL syllabuses should be.

Bu t wha t do At this point, it is time to ask: What about the learners? How do they feels tuden ts th ink? about all the claims made for them, and the concern shown for their

cultural improvement? As a recent ELT Journal editorial suggested:A properly conducted survey of students views on the matter ofcultural standpoint and credibility of the range of teachers andmaterials available to them would be very interesting.

(Editorial, ELT Journal, April, 1988).In the rest of this paper, I describe one attempt to conduct such a survey.

The survey: The survey was in the form of a questionnaire which was distributed tobackground 300 Greek students. The students were asked five questions:1 Do you think your teacher of English should know the students

mother tongue?2 Do you think your teacher of English should know about Greece

and Greek culture?3 Which model of English do you wish to learn: British/American/

other?4 Is it important for you to speak English like a native speaker?5 What do you think the content or subject matter of your English

lessons should be?a. The English language;b. Facts about science and society;c. Social problems;d. British life and institutions;e. English/American literature;f. The culture of other countries;g. Political problems;h. The experiences of other students in the class;i. Greek life and institutions;j. American life and institutions.

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The first two questions sought to elicit their attitude to the bilingual/bicultural teacher.Questions 3 and 4 aimed to discover how strongly students felt aboutnative-speaker models of the language.The final question was more detailed: it asked students to specify the kindof content they would like their English lessons to be based on. The itemsin the list of topics are based on Cook (1983), Abbott (1984), andProdromou (1988): thus, I hoped to find out what students felt about someof the assumptions we teach.

The students The subjects were 300 Greek students of English, mostly young adults,studying English as a foreign language in private language institutes or atThe British Council Teaching Centre, Thessaloniki. One third of thestudents were beginners, while the others were intermediate or advanced.They were all working their way towards either the Cambridge FirstCertificate or Proficiency. I chose to divide the distribution of thequestionnaires between Greek private language institutes(frontisteria - as repetition is cumbersome, henceforth PLI) and TheBritish Council (henceforth, BC), in order to establish a possibledifference in attitude towards the target culture on the part of students whochose to emole at the BC with its exclusively native-speaker teachingstaff, and those who chose to attend lessons at PLI, whose teachers aremostly non-native speakers of English. I included different levels oflanguage ability (beginners to post-First Certificate) largely in order toidentify possible differentiation in attitudes towards the use of the mother-tongue in the classroom by students with only a little knowledge ofEnglish and those, on the other hand, who knew quite a lot. (Thequestionnaire was given to beginners in a Greek translation.)

The results The results of the questionnaire are summarized in Table 1 on page 44. Inthe next section, I attempt a summary and initial interpretation of theresults.Questions I and 2: The bilingual/bicultural teacherJust over half of the students thought the (native-speaker) teacher shouldknow the learners mother tongue and know about local culture. Therewere slightly more BC students who felt the teacher should be bilingual/bicultural, compared to students in the Greek PLI. On the face of it, onemight have expected the result to be the other way round, on theassumption that BC students had paid to be taught by native speakers. Apossible explanation for the slight reversal of expectations in this respectis a feeling of frustration felt by BC students when faced with non-Greek-speaking teachers attempting to explain difficult vocabulary or whengiving complicated instructions. Beginners feel more strongly thanhigher-level students (65 per cent compared to 53 per cent) that theirteacher should know the students mother tongue. This is predictable,given the limitations of direct method approaches with students whoknow little English.W hat culture? W hich culture? 43

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Tab/e 1: Total number of students: 300Results of questionnaireon cross-cultural factors 1 Do you think your teacher of English should know the students mother

in language learning tongue? % total BC PLI Beg Int/Adv5 8 5 9 5 5 6 5 5 3

2 Do you think your teacher of English should know about Greece and Greekculture? % total BC PLI Beg Int/Adv

5 6 5 8 5 1 4 2 7 43 Which model of English do you wish to learn?

% total BC PLI Beg Int/Advi British 7 5 7 6 7 2 7 7 7 6ii American 18 1 6 2 2 1 7 1 6iii Other 5 0 . 5 3 - 1

4 Do you think it is important for you to speak English like a native speaker?% total BC PLI Beg Int/Adv

6 2 5 8 7 8 6 4 5 25 What do you think the content or subject-matter of your English lessons

should be? % total BC PLI Beg Int/Adva. The English language 8 4 8 3 8 5 8 0 8 7b. Facts: science, society 7 4 7 4 7 3 6 2 8 6c. Social problems 7 2 6 6 8 4 4 9 8 3d. British life, institutions 6 0 6 1 5 8 5 7 6 5e. English/American literature 4 4 3 8 5 6 2 9 4 8f. Culture of other countries 3 6 3 3 4 0 2 4 4 3g. Political problems 3 1 3 3 2 7 1 9 4 8h. Experiences of students 2 8 2 5 3 2 2 0 3 1i. Greek life, institutions 2 7 2 4 3 2 1 8 3 1. . American life, institutions 2 6 2 4 3 0 1 8 3 1

Ke yTotaI Aggregate replies of 300 students, all levels, British Council and Greekprivate language institutes in Thessaloniki.BS British Council students at all levels.PLI Students in Greek language institutes at FC/Proficiency level.Beg Students at beginner/elementary level (questionnaire issued in Greek).Int/Adv Intermediate and advanced students.

In the case of cultural awareness, it is the intermediate and advancedstudents who say that their teacher should be familiar with local culture(74 per cent of intermediate/advanced students compared to 42 per cent ofbeginners). This could have something to do with age and linguisticcompetence: advanced students, being more adult, may also be moresensitive to questions of cultural identity, or simply have enoughlanguage - and successful learning experience - at their disposal towelcome the challenge of discussing local culture in class.Question 3: Native-speaker varieties of EnglishThe overall picture here is of the universal popularity of British Englishcompared to American English. This must surely be a reflection of thebad press the Americans have had in post-war Greece (the presence ofLuke Prodromou4

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US bases on Greek soil, a history of interference in internal affairs, etc.),as well as the widespread feeling amongst Greeks that British English is apurer, more refined form of English. (The BBC is a byword for clarityof diction.)More PLI students (22 per cent compared to 16 per cent) preferredAmerican English. This, along with the slightly greater preference forBritish English amongst BC students, suggests that one attractivemarketing factor for BC clientele is British English itself.Question 4: Native-speaker pronunciationOnly 62 per cent of students overall say they would like to speak Englishlike a native speaker. Even fewer BC students (58 per cent) attachimportance to a native-speaker accent than PLI students, which issurprising. This may be due to any one or more of the following factors:- BC students, surrounded by British teachers, take the question of

native-speaker pronunciation for granted.- BC students have demystified the attractions of native-speakeraccents and discovered the limitations of having exclusively native-speaker teachers.

- In trying to get students to speak with an English accent we are in someway invading their cultural space, in a way which does not apply togrammar or vocabulary. Students are often educated into adoptingcertain attitudes by the way they are taught: the fact that most teachersstill ignore or neglect pronunciation may have something to do withstudents perception of pronunciation as relatively unimportant.

- BC students, faced with a variety of occasionally obscure or evenincomprehensible native-speaker accents, may feel a goodpronunciation is beyond their reach.

Question 5: What should language teaching be about?The fact that most students (84 per cent) said they wanted the lesson to beabout the English language may be so obvious as to be insignificant, asall lessons, in a way, are about English.Science and society. Apart from language itself, the most popular sourceof content was facts about science and society, and the least popularAmerican life and institutions. This is an interesting contrast, in thatscience and society are the most neutral/universal cultural areas in thelist, while American culture is the most marked and, in Greece, emotive.The interest in science, technology, and society revealed in the answers(particularly at advanced levels) may well be a reflection of the fact thatthe majority of learners in the survey are university students, with ahealthy interest in the world around them, and a less healthy obsessionwith passing their exams at all costs! Social problems are uniformlymotivating for both BC and PLI students, but with a significantly lowerlevel of interest amongst beginners (49 per cent compared to 83 per centfor more advanced students).The great Greek paperchase. There is quite strong interest (60 per cent) inBritish life and institutions amongst all students, both at BC and in PLI, atWhat culture? Which culture? 45

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all levels. There is, however, a significant minority (40 per cent) which isnot very interested in British culture. As far as Britain is concerned, youngGreeks do not seem over anxious about the threat of cultural imperialism.This is in sharp contrast to attitudes to American culture (26 per cent).Although not justifying an Anglo-centric approach to content, thesefigures suggest quite a strong association in learners minds betweenlearning a language and learning about the people who speak thatlanguage.Why British and not American ? One plausible explanation is thepredominance of the British-based Cambridge examinations, and thebackwash effect they have. (A massive 45,000 candidates a year take theCambridge examinations in Greece.) There may be a conception (ormisconception) in candidates minds that their chances of passing theexamination are greater if they know about British culture. Culture-specific material emanating from the Cambridge Syndicate (less obviousin recent years) may fuel such preconceptions.The cultural foreground. While the unpopularity of American topics maybe explicable in terms of post-war Greek history and an exam-orientedsociety, it is harder to account for the very low rating given to Greekculture (non-British Council students are somewhat warmer towardslocal culture). The most likely explanation (confirmed by informaldiscussion with some of the students who completed the questionnaire) isthat students go to the BC and PLI to escape from everyday routine;going to foreign language lessons is primarily a social event. Theusefulness of the Cambridge First Certificate is, in practical terms,limited, but it certainly gives thousands of Greeks a pretext for going outin the evenings and meeting people. Another reason for the relativeunpopularity of Greek subject matter may be the highly charged nature ofGreek political life, particularly in recent years. Discussions of political orsemi-political topics (such as Greek newspapers) can be unexpectedlydivisive: the students affective filter is raised against personalrevelations, and normally voluble Greeks are left speechless.There is further evidence for this hypothesis in the low response topolitical problems as content (31 per cent) and the personal experienceof students (28 per cent). The latter result, in an age when humanisticapproaches are becoming an orthodoxy, should make us tread carefullywhen personalizing classroom activities.English and American literature. There is quite a high interest in literatureamongst students (44 per cent, but far less at lower levels), which matchesthe revival of interest in the subject in applied linguistics circles.The culture of other countries. Nearly 4 out of 10 students find a moremulticultural approach to content attractive. There is in Greece a mixedtradition of both xenophobia and xenomania, and together with anethnocentric educational system, this may have helped shape this ratherambiguous result. A multicultural approach, particularly one whichinvolves comparisons between the students culture and other cultures, isLuke Prodromou6

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an important area to develop. This is a point I shall raise in my concludingremarks.

British Councilversus other

students

Ways forwardThe culturalbackground

The culturalforeground

There are no significant differences between the attitudes of students whopay to come to The British Council and other students. (BC students areslightly more favourably inclined towards British culture, while non-BCstudents are slightly less hostile towards American culture.) Frontisteriastudents are somewhat keener (8 per cent) on local culture than BCstudents.Knowledge of the target culture remains an important part of languagelearning, especially at higher levels. This may be due to both subjectiveand objective factors: on the one hand, the sheer, intrinsic delight indiscovering more about a culture so different from the students own -this includes the escapist factor. On the other hand, there is what GillianBrown has discussed as the interpretation of discourse: an intuitivecompetence, drawing on cultural knowledge, which native-speakerspossess, but which learners have to be trained in (Brown, 1990). Trainingstudents to infer culturally-determined meanings from clues in a text is aparticularly valuable approach with advanced students who have to dealwith authentic texts. It is an approach to the cultural background verydifferent from the traditional teaching of facts about British life andinstitutions.My own feeling is that there is still a place for this kind of learning aboutthe target culture, but that wherever possible such fact-based sessionsshould be integrated with the other work done by the class and should beconsistent with a learner-centred methodology, if that is the optionadopted by the teacher. Activities in class may take the form of games,quizzes, questionnaires, and project work.For example, at elementary level, a true-false exercise about Britain or theUSA may be conducted as a quiz game or as part of project work. Not onlyare such activities potentially enjoyable in themselves but may also be ofpractical value to any students planning to travel abroad:

True or False?- People drive on the left in the UK.- If you go to Oxford you will see Buckingham Palace.- You cannot use English pounds in Scotland.- The head of the government in Britain is the President.- There are 20 pence in a pound.

etc.The survey suggests that there is a place for materials based on localculture in the EFL classroom but that, in this context at least, it might notbe as predominant as that suggested by Alptekin (1984). Nevertheless, thedirection taken by Adaskou et al., (1990) in devising materials forMorocco following an assessment of teachers attitudes to the culturalcontent of textbooks is consistent with the approach taken here in that theyWhat culture? Which culture? 47

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avoided a top-down strategy in arriving at their decisions. Although mostof the texts chosen by the Morocco team involve local uses of English,they also include texts of general interest corresponding to the topics inmy English as education category (technology, unemployment, history,science, etc. (Adaskou et al., 1990: 9).A technique I have found useful for drawing on local culture in a naturalcommunicative? way, is a team game which reverses the usual roles ofteacher and learners. The students, in teams, prepare questions about localculture for the native-speaker teacher to answer. The group which asksmost questions to which the teacher does not know the answer, wins. (Ifthe innocent teacher is new to the country, he or she may be allowed toselect a student as informant/advisor.)This kind of activity makes for a more reciprocal relationship between theculture of the teacher and that of the students. It involves a built-inrecognition of the value of the learners culture and the value of theircontribution to the learning process: As Freire puts it: the literacyprocess, as cultural action for freedom, is an act of knowing in which thelearner assumes the role of knowing subject, in dialogue with theeducator (1970: 29). This use of learner input, incidentally, helps theguest teacher develop greater awareness of local historical events andattitudes towards them, thus avoiding certain cultural faux pas, which theAlptekins and Adaskou et al. warn against.

Placing or Ramptons (1990) assertion that linguistic expertise is more importantdisplacing the than notions of who is and who is not a native speaker gains implicitnative speaker? support from the way students responded to question 4 of my survey. In

the long run, what seems to matter most to students is the teachers abilityto do the job; it is not who you are, but what you know (Rampton, 1990:99) that students will pay for. Non-native-speaker teachers of English arenot necessarily worse off than their native-speaker colleagues: they canbe, and often are, as expert in English and ELT methodology as nativespeakers, and have the added advantage of being able to draw on the vastreservoir of the students first language and culture (see Atkinson, 1987,for practical uses of the first language in the classroom).

What should The more advanced the students knowledge of English becomes, thelanguage teaching more receptive they are to interesting content and a richer cultural input. Abe about? great deal has already been done at higher levels to incorporate into course

design content based on school subjects and the learners personal orprofessional interests. Some materials have demonstrated that a content-based approach is also possible at elementary level (e.g. Hutchinson,1985). Materials, wherever possible suggested or contributed by thestudents themselves, should obviously continue to be about thingsintelligent people would normally want to read or discuss. Examinationclasses are particularly prone to the fallacy that the lesson has to beboring, that the testing process is more important than the educational

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value of the content. One looks forward to more examination materialwhich successfully balances exam preparation with preparation for livingin the real world, multiple choice with personal choice.

Conclusion: In finishing, I would like to broaden the perspective somewhat. Beyondtowards a future facts, however interesting, and beyond the horizons of local or target

perfect cultures, there are other cultures, for which English as an internationallanguage and English teaching as a global profession are natural media.Broadening students horizons is a traditional objective of educationalactivity, and the expression takes on a new and more urgent meaning in atime of global environmental disasters and the collapse of internationalbarriers. In the USA, there is a growing interest in Global Educationwhich prompts Finocchiaro to comment:

Bilingualism and biculturalism are not sufficient for living andparticipating in todays interdependent world. It is our responsibility toprepare learners to cope not only with the worlds universal problemsand behaviours, but with its many ethnic and cultural systems.(Finocchiaro, 1982).

In teaching any language, we are imparting information and thereforepower; in teaching English we can impart to learners not only the presentperfect, but also the power of knowing and caring more about the worldthey live in. English is at the centre of international and global culture. It isa cultural activity; it is an important activity.

Epilogue: whats the There are two ways in which I have found the research described in thisuse of classroom article useful. First of all, there is the end-product of the survey: insightsresearch? into the subject under discussion, cultural factors in language learning.

Secondly, there is the process itself of going to the students and finding outto what extent the teachers assumptions and theirs coincide.It is both disconcerting and stimulating to discover that our assumptionsand those of our students do not always coincide. As one wanders aroundthe mid-career plateau, such shocks to ones complacency are a refreshingform of self-development. Going back to the learners generates a renewedinterest in a process which, after fifteen years of language teaching, risksbecoming an unexamined ritual.Received November 1990

Note1 This article is based on a talk given at the 23rdIATEFL Conference in Warwick, UK, April 1989.ReferencesAbbott, G. 1984. Should we start digging new

holes? ELT Journal, 38/2: 98-102.Abbott, G. 1987. EFL as education. System, 15/l:47-53.

Adaskou, K., D. Britten, and B. Fahsi. 1990.Design decisions on the cultural content of asecondary English course for Morocco. ELTJournal, 44/1: 3-10.Alptekin, C. and M. Alptekin. 1984. The questionof Culture. ELX Journal, 38/1: 14-20.

Atkinson, D. 1987. The mother-tongue in theclassroom: a neglected resource? ELT Journal,41/4.What culture? Which culture? 49

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Barnett, J. A., G. Broughton, and T. Greenwood.1968. Success w ith English, Teachers Handbook1. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Brown, G. 1990. Cultural values: the interpretationof discourse. ELT Journal, 44/1: 11-17.Brumfit, C. J. 1980. Problems and Principles in

English Teaching. Oxford: Pergamon.Cook, V. J. 1983. What should language teaching beabout? ELT Journal, 37/3: 229-34.Finocchiaro, M. 1982. Reflections on the Past, thePresent and the Future. Forum, July, 1982.Freire, P. 1970. Cultural Act ion for Freedom.Harmondsworth: Penguin.Howatt, A. P. R. 1984. A History of EnglishLanguage Teaching. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.Hutchinson, T. 1985. Project English. Oxford:Oxford University Press.Jesperson, O. 1904. How to Teach a ForeignLanguage, London: Allen and Unwin.Palmer, H. E. 1940. The Teaching of Oral English.London: Longmans, Green and Co.Prodromou, L. 1988. English as cultural action.ELT Journal, 42/2: 73-83.Rampton, M. B. H. 1990. Displacing the nativespeaker: expertise, affiliation, and inheritance.

ELT Journal, 44/2: 97-101.Robinson, G. L. N. 1985. CrossculturalUnderstanding. Oxford: Pergamon.Svanes, B. 1988. Attitudes and cultural distance insecond language acquisition. Applied Linguistics,9/4: 357-371.Valdes, J. M. (ed.). 1986. Culture Bound.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Valette, R. M. 1986. The culture test, in Valdes(ed.). 1986.Whitney, N. 1988 Editorial. ELT Journal, 42/2: 71.Wilkins, D. 1976. Notional Syllabuses. Oxford:Oxford University Press.

The authorLuke Prodromou has a degree in English with Greek(Bristol), an MA in Shakespeare Studies(Birmingham), and a Postgraduate TEFL Diploma(Leeds). He is a teacher trainer for The BritishCouncil, Thessaloniki. He is the co-author of Bits andPieces, a book of sketches for students, On the Move,an advanced course book, Are You Ready? (Use ofEnglish), and Medicine (ESP); he is also the author ofa forthcoming book on the mixed-ability class.

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