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How culturally appropriate is the communicative approach?
Lecturer in ESL and Computer Studies at Western Metropolitan College of TAFE, Melbourne. His experience includes lecturing on EFL methodology at the University of Education in Ho Chi Minh City, and conducting an INSET programme for Vietnamese EFL teachers in the same city. His research experience includes extensive field work in Vietnam.
The article questions the universal relevance of the communicative approach to language teaching in view of the cultural conflicts arising from the introduction of a predominantly Western language teaching approach to Far Eastern cultures. The central argument is that, for the communicative approach to be made suitable for Asian conditions, it needs to be both culturally attuned and culturally accepted. It is suggested that ‘mediating’ can serve as a useful tool in this process. In this way the nature of what eventually takes place in the classroom involves the teacher's ability to both filter the method to make it appropriate to the local cultural norms, and to re-define the teacher-student relationship in keeping with the cultural norms embedded in the method itself.
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