Introduction

The Tourist and the Sojourner

The purpose of this monograph is to explore the issues that arise if we
wish to teach and assess a person’s ability to relate to and communicate
with people who speak a different language and live in a different cultural
context. That context can be in another country or in one’s own, since
most countries are multicultural, multi-ethnic and multilingual.1 The
need to do this is not a new one. Relationships between different cultural
and linguistic groups – whether they are called ‘ethnic groups’, ‘nations’
or ‘states’ – are at the heart of diplomacy, and the need to choose appropri-
ate ambassadors of one group to another is as old as civilised societies.
What is new is the condition of the world which allows and encourages all
the people in a cultural and linguistic group, not just its diplomats and
professional travellers, to take up contact with people in other groups. 2
This leads to two quite different types of response even if individuals in
reality may combine elements of both: the response of the tourist and that
of the sojourner.
The tourist response – and the word itself – was, until the late 20th
century, far more familiar than the word and the characteristics of the
sojourner, because the latter had touched fewer people. As the 21st cen-
tury has progressed, sojourners have become far more familiar, and the
causes and consequences of migration more diverse and controversial, but
the word sojourner remains unusual, and ‘migrants’ and ‘immigrants’ are
terms in much wider use. In Europe, the end of the Soviet Union and its
imperial control of other countries led to an opening of borders and
opportunities for economic migration from East to West, and sometimes
back again, especially for young people. Economic migration from other
continents, especially Africa, was more dangerous and life-threatening for
those travelling across closed borders and rough seas. Displacement by
wars and migration from West Asia, or ‘the Middle East’ as Europeans
say, was an unexpected and highly sensitive phenomenon with different
reactions in different countries which have created deep divides within
Europe itself. North America, especially the United States, has had similar
experiences as people have fled poverty, war and terror in some South
American countries, resulting in division and extremism in the responses
within the population. Populism, a new kind of fascism, is one regrettable

1
2 Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

result in both Europe and the United States. In Asia, too, there is popula-
tion movement, often unknown to Europeans and Americans. It has been
largely driven by economic factors as people from poor countries seek
work in richer countries, a phenomenon that started much earlier in
Europe, and that is likely to mirror the developments there. Whatever the
causes, such events are the context for language education and cannot be
ignored.
At the same time, there have been vastly increasing numbers of ‘tour-
ists’ as travel, and particularly air travel, has become much cheaper and
within the grasp of almost everyone in economically developed countries.
The change is generational. Young people today travel more than their
parents but the sharper contrast is with their grandparents. For many of
these, the only experience of travel was the enforced ‘tourism’ of the
1939–1945 war, which affected people throughout the world who would
otherwise never have left their region, let alone their country. 3
Tourism has major economic consequences, often visible but also
often superficial. It is the sojourner who produces substantial and lasting
challenges to a society’s unquestioned and unconscious beliefs, values,
behaviours and meanings, and whose own beliefs, values, behaviours and
meanings are in turn challenged and expected to change. The tourist
hopes for quite the opposite effect: first that what they have travelled to
see will not change, for otherwise the journey would lose its purpose4; and
second that their own way of living will be enriched by the experience of
seeing others, but not fundamentally changed.
The experience of the sojourner is one of comparisons, of what is the
same or different but compatible, but also of conflicts and incompatible
contrasts. The experience of the sojourner is challenging for all concerned
and, for many sojourners, tragic. Their migration is forced, their accep-
tance of a new ‘home’ reluctant. That same experience is nonetheless
potentially valuable, both for societies and for individuals, since the state
of the world is such that societies and individuals have no alternative but
proximity, interaction and relationship; these are the conditions of exis-
tence. It is important to remember, however, that we already have a hun-
dred years of insight, as my initial quotation from E.M. Forster shows. 5
Given favourable circumstances, societies benefit from more harmonious
co-existence, and individuals gain an understanding of others and of
themselves which makes them more conscious of their humanity and more
able to reflect upon and question the social conditions in which they live.
Where the tourist remains essentially unchanged, the sojourner has the
opportunity to learn and be educated, acquiring the capacity to critique
and improve their own and others’ conditions, actions which are ‘politi-
cal’, a term whose meaning will be explicated in later chapters.
The attitudes of the sojourner are, in short, preferable to those of the
tourist, but this is not a book about sojourners per se; it is about language
learners, who may or may not become actual sojourners. What I want
 Introduction 3

them to become, however, is people with a sojourner’s modes of experi-

encing and analysing other ways of life and, as a consequence, their own.
I want them, as a further consequence, to change in themselves – whether
they travel or not – in sum, to be educated through language learning.

Teaching and Assessment

Yet why teach and assess the qualities of a sojourner? Is it not enough
to let these qualities emerge and to create the conditions propitious for
societal harmony and individual education? The answer lies in the institu-
tions in which the qualities are developed, but also in the underlying char-
acteristics of social groups and societies.
Social groups and societies have as a fi rst priority their own longevity,
and they ensure that their members acquire loyalty and group identity
from an early age. Their institutions support them through processes of
socialisation, particularly educational institutions. At the same time, and
increasingly as the world changes, schools and other educational institu-
tions are expected to prepare those entrusted to them for the inter-lingual
and inter-cultural experiences of the contemporary world. For the quali-
ties of the sojourner are seldom acquired without help, are seldom learnt
without teaching. Furthermore, these same qualities often run counter to
many other dimensions of education which are intended to create a sense
of loyalty and group identity; they therefore need special attention.
Educational institutions live within a tension of looking inwards to ‘our
own’ group and looking outwards to ‘others’. They have responsibilities,
and need to demonstrate their ability to fulfi l them, to show they are
accountable. Evaluation of their general efficacy, and assessment of the
individuals in their charge, are part of that accountability.
Evaluation and assessment6 cannot and should not be separated from
the teaching and general institutional arrangements, and this monograph
focuses on the teaching as well as the assessment of individuals. On the
other hand, it will not deal with the evaluation of general arrangements,
of the efficacy of the implementation of plans and principles for teaching
and assessment. It will focus on the principles, on the ways in which they
can inform planning and on the relationship between teaching and
assessment.

Intercultural Communicative Competence

Sojourners of every kind live in an environment that is new for them
and where they themselves are perceived by others as new, as ‘newcomers’.
In all societal environments – from the local community to the national
society – there are complexities of power relations. Newcomers are not
spared these, but experience a different kind of relationship from those
that already exist. They are new, they are ‘outsiders’, they are ‘them’ not
4 Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

‘us’. Whether they would otherwise be of high or low social status –

whether they were, for example, professional people or street cleaners in
their society of origin – in their new circumstances they have this addi-
tional dimension to cope with. It may lower their previous high status,
making teachers become taxi drivers. Power relationships are therefore
crucial, but can only be regulated by substantial societal efforts, in institu-
tions, in the media, in politics. Education institutions are one important
location for this, and what is described and discussed in this book should
be seen in the wider institutional context. This book does not, however,
deal directly with that wider context, for it is a book about learners and
teachers in their classroom, however broadly interpreted the latter con-
cept. This book is focused on helping teachers to develop in their learners
the competences they need to bring to any encounter with ‘them’, irrespec-
tive of the location, especially where language competence is a crucial
element for success.
Bearing these restrictions in mind, teachers can develop in learners the
qualities required of the sojourner, which I shall label ‘intercultural com-
municative competence’ (ICC), which is in turn the foundation for ‘inter-
cultural citizenship’ (ICit). This is not to say that ICC is irrelevant if
learners never become sojourners in another society – or even in another
place in their own society. For they will nonetheless encounter sojourners
and need to understand their experience and communicate with them
and, secondly, the very fact that they may not become sojourners means
that they need the perspective that challenges what they assume is normal
and natural.
The phrase intercultural communicative competence deliberately
maintains a link with traditions in foreign language teaching, but expands
the concept of ‘communicative competence’ in significant ways, to what I
once called ‘post-communicative’ language teaching (Byram, 1988). The
link makes explicit that my focus will be on the contribution of ‘foreign’
language teaching (FLT) to the development of the qualities required of a
sojourner. The term ‘foreign’ is somewhat problematic. It suggests that an
entity comes from outside, is alien and different, and thus contains some
negative connotations. Terms have varied over time, geography and disci-
pline, from ‘modern languages’ and ‘langues vivantes’ through ‘second
languages’ and ‘additional languages’ to ‘world languages’, ‘fremmede
sprog’ and ‘Fremdsprachen’, and many more in other languages.
Furthermore, what is for one person a ‘foreign’ language from ‘outside’ is
for the next person the language they speak at home while living ‘inside’,
in the same society. Whichever term is used, there are unavoidable con-
notations, some of them undesired. I have chosen to continue to use ‘for-
eign’ and hope that any negative connotations will be removed in the
process of analysis of what foreign language competence means in the
context of intercultural encounters. As will become clear, this is a book
that attempts to present a general and abstract view of ICC and
 Introduction 5

simultaneously to serve in practical terms those who teach a language that

is mainly spoken in another country, even if the language is also present
in the country where learners live; it is above all a book for teachers of
foreign languages in compulsory education. This is a difficult act to bal-
ance and has been a source of misunderstanding. In this second version, I
have also tried to make it useful for language teachers in other situations,
e.g. where the language they teach is the fi rst language of some people
who live in the same country. In doing so, I have attempted to avoid the
risks of complexity and confusion, the risks inherent in trying to cover all
possible teaching and learning situations. My experience of reactions to
the fi rst version has shown how easy it is to be misunderstood.
FLT does not need, however, to claim sole responsibility for the teach-
ing and assessment of ICC. Other subject areas such as the teaching of
geography, history or literature can introduce learners to other worlds and
the experience of otherness. History can confront learners with otherness
in the dimension of time. Literature can give them an imagined experience
of otherness. FLT, including the teaching of literature in a foreign lan-
guage, has the experience of otherness at the centre of its concern, as it
requires learners to engage with both familiar and unfamiliar experience
through the medium of another language. Furthermore, FLT has a central
aim of enabling learners to use that language to interact both with people
for whom it is their preferred and ‘natural’ medium of experience, those
we call ‘native speakers’, and with those who use it in lingua franca situ-
ations, where it is an estranging and sometimes disturbing means of
coping with the world for all concerned.
It is thus possible and important to distinguish between intercultural
competence that takes place in ‘the same’ language and intercultural com-
municative competence where a ‘foreign’ language is involved. Let us take
some contrasting examples. When a French doctor talks with a French
schoolteacher, in French, about a child who is ill, each will bring to the
situation their professional knowledge and identity, and with these some
specific vocabulary and discourse. They will need to fi nd a common
understanding which will require each to engage with the other’s profes-
sional culture and language, their ‘languaculture’ (Agar, 1996). To do
this, they need intercultural competence. When the same two people meet
at their sports club or reading circle, they share an acquired common
understanding of the sport or the literature, and the language they need
to interact with each other; they need little or no intercultural compe-
tence. There are, in the first meeting, linguistic demands as well as a need
for intercultural competence, but the language requirements are quite dif-
ferent from a situation where the French doctor talks with a German
teacher about a child who is ill while on an exchange visit to France. The
impact of at least one of them speaking a foreign language – or both of
them if they use a lingua franca such as English – is not just a matter of
degree; it requires skills, knowledge and attitudes that are, and are
6 Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

experienced as, different in kind. It requires intercultural communicative

competence. These examples can be made less Eurocentric by substituting
‘country X’ for ‘French’ and ‘country Y’ for German. Imagine, for exam-
ple, the competences needed for a European doctor and a Chinese doctor
to discuss their respective medical traditions.
FLT is concerned with intercultural communicative competence,
where ‘communication’ is more than the exchange of information and
sending of messages, a view which dominated ‘communicative language
teaching’ (Byram, 1988; Trim, 1983). Even the exchange of information is
dependent upon understanding how what one says or writes will be per-
ceived and interpreted by someone from another cultural and linguistic
group. It depends on the ability to decentre and take up the perspective of
the listener or reader. For successful ‘communication’ is not solely a matter
of the efficiency of information exchange. It is focused on establishing and
maintaining relationships, and the efficacy of communication depends on
using language to demonstrate one’s willingness to relate. This often
involves the indirectness of ‘politeness’ rather than the direct and ‘effi-
cient’ choice of language full of information. That ways of being polite
vary from one linguistic and cultural group to another is widely known,
but this is often reduced to the acquisition of particular formulae.
Politeness is only the visible symptom of a more complex phenomenon: the
differences in beliefs, values, behaviours and meanings through which
people interact with each other, differences which may be incompatible
and contain the seeds of conflict.
ICC is not a panacea but politeness may help, and the introduction of
the language of politeness into syllabi for communicative language teach-
ing showed that communication was seen as interaction among people of
complex cultural and social identities. Nonetheless, FLT needs to go
beyond linguistic realisations of politeness to take account of the ways of
living out of which others speak and write. Only then can FLT claim to
prepare learners to communicate and interact with people who are ‘other’
and accepted as such, rather than being reduced to people assumed to be
(almost) ‘like us’.

Teaching and Assessing ICC: A Framework

It follows from the view of communication and interaction presented
here that there can be no generalisable syllabus, neither linguistic nor cul-
tural. For each learner brings to the learning process their existing linguis-
tic and cultural competences and identities. A French learner of English
needs a different syllabus and methods from a Greek, and different again
from a Japanese, and within each of these linguistic groups there are dif-
ferent needs arising from age, purpose, institution and so on. If we substi-
tute Arabic for English, then the differences become even more complex
because there are French people with Arabic as their heritage language.
 Introduction 7

The complexity could be increased by changing the list of learners and

their learning situations; the potential complexity is enormous. Similarly,
the assessment of their success as learners needs to take account of their
origins, ages, purpose and so on, as well as the nature of the ICC they are
learning. It is therefore inevitable that non-specific discussion can provide
only a framework, a discussion of principles, illustrated with specific
examples, but no more.
The framework offered in this monograph is an attempt to clarify
principles that give adequate recognition to the view of FLT presented
above. It is written above all from the FLT perspective and has a strong
link to the teaching of foreign languages in general education. It is thus
written particularly for FLT professionals, be they teachers or policy
makers or language planners. I considered writing the text in such a way
that it would explicitly include second language teaching (SLT), by which
I mean the teaching of a language that is routinely spoken outside the
classroom, in the society in which the learner lives, e.g. the case of Arabic
speakers learning French in France. There are clearly significant similari-
ties between FLT and SLT, and the distinction is not a dichotomous one
but rather a question of degree. However, it is precisely these nuances that
decided me against trying to take the variety of factors into consideration
throughout the text. It would have otherwise been full of digressions and
qualifications to cover a range of cases. The intention is to write at a level
of abstraction that can be related to FLT or SLT in a wide range of situa-
tions, although it is nonetheless necessary to use specific examples and
terminology. Thus I shall refer to foreign countries and societies where I
might also have referred to communities with a second language within
learners’ own countries. It would be tedious to try to formulate the text in
such a way that it refers to all possibilities, and I hope readers who con-
sider themselves to be involved in SLT will make their own amendments
and qualifications and still fi nd the text useful. I am aware that misread-
ings which lead to wrong assumptions and critiques may still occur.7
A text of this kind, which attempts to discuss general principles, is
difficult to make accessible to all the readers one would wish. It has to be
positioned at a high level of abstraction if it is to be valid in its claims, yet
this tends to create difficulties in following the argument. Constantly
offering examples, however, can cause clutter and even lead readers to
reject the argument because a particular example does not hold in their
own situation. I have tried to compromise by offering some examples but
not exemplifying every point. The monograph will perhaps function best
when used in teacher education, where readers can discuss the argument
with respect to their own concrete situation, rather than hypothetical
illustrations that I might provide. I would nonetheless wish to assure read-
ers that the text arises out of my own experience of concrete situations in
many years of teaching and teacher education, and has since its fi rst
appearance been used by other teachers, who have taken from it what they
8 Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

fi nd useful. I would not want any reader to try to ‘implement’ or ‘apply’ it

in some simplistic way. The professional autonomy of teachers is impor-
tant and should lead them to make their own uses of the text as they feel
appropriate.
Finally, it will quickly become evident that I am writing from a
European perspective, partly because of the ‘biography’ of the mono-
graph, born in work for the Council of Europe, and partly because of my
own biography, born and educated in England, with an education that
turned me towards other European languages, literatures and societies. It
was only much later that I had opportunity to experience and attempt to
understand other continents and countries, including the United States
(where the first edition of this book was written) and China (e.g. with the
help of my colleague and friend Jia Yuxin; see Jia et al., 2019), but it was
salutary at an early stage to have a corrective analysis by Parmenter (2003)
from an East Asian perspective. That the ideas in this monograph have
nonetheless been used on other continents, including Asia, may be an indi-
cation either that they are more widely applicable, or that users have not
challenged the ideas sufficiently. I cannot pursue the question here and
leave it to others to decide.

What this Book is …

Chapter 1 sets the scene by discussing the nature of intercultural com-
petence and communication, and makes the point that FLT is an enter-
prise which takes place always in specific circumstances, is inevitably
influenced by those circumstances and should be planned to suit the envi-
ronment in which it takes place. In Chapter 2, I offer a descriptive model
of intercultural communicative competence (ICC). This is a description of
components of the ability to understand and relate to people from other
countries and/or cultural groups, and is intended to be a non-exhaustive
but comprehensive and rich description of what is required in the most
complex and also the most favourable circumstances of intercultural com-
munication; it does not deal with the competences of conflict resolution.
It is not a blueprint for all FLT. Since FLT has to be responsive to its envi-
ronment, it is frequently the case that FLT quite properly does not attempt
to develop in learners the most complex competence possible.
Chapters 3 and 4 take the discussion closer to the immediate concerns
of FLT professionals, and to what is teachable, learnable and assessable.
In Chapter 3, I formulate the description of ICC in terms of competences
and objectives. These provide a means of determining what the teacher
and learner wish to achieve by suggesting what knowledge, behaviour,
skill or attitude might ‘count as’ a part of ICC. Chapter 4 considers how
these objectives might also be used to plan a curriculum, and is therefore
intended to be particularly useful in setting the parameters within which
FLT takes place on a routine basis. Suggestions for how this routine can
 Introduction 9

be systematic and consistent in approach are then made in a section which

discusses planning by objectives.
Chapter 5 is intended for those who are involved in the assessment of
FLT, which has hitherto mainly focused on linguistic competence. Policy
statements commonly claim that the aims of FLT include knowledge of
other countries, changes in attitudes to foreign languages, cultures and
peoples and, more recently, the acquisition of the characteristics of (demo-
cratic) citizenship. The assessment of the degree to which individual learn-
ers achieve those aims, and the evaluation of the success of programmes
of study in helping to do so, have on the other hand taken place very
rarely. As we shall see, it is often said that such assessment is not possible,
or not reliable or valid enough to be used when learners are to be given
certification of their abilities, and it is only in the last few years that there
has been evidence of assessment methods that meet some of these objec-
tions. It is also commonly observed that the lack of assessment leads to
insufficient attention to teaching processes that can help learners to
achieve what are after all the central aims of FLT. Chapter 5 addresses
these issues by discussing the assessment options for the objectives pro-
posed in earlier chapters. It argues that testing is perhaps necessary in
some circumstances, but is insufficient to reflect the full complexity of
ICC. This chapter then discusses new approaches that have appeared
since the first edition of this monograph and how they might be related to
the framework proposed here.

What this Book is Not …

I emphasised above that both monograph and author have a ‘biogra-
phy’. In the latter case, the biography includes many years of teaching
foreign languages in England and training others to do so. As a result, the
monograph was written primarily for other language teachers. It contains
a model of ICC which is intended to be useful to teachers of languages,
whether ‘modern foreign languages’, ‘langues vivantes’, ‘Fremdsprachen’,
‘world languages’ or ‘additional languages’, to cite just some labels from
different countries. It is not a model of intercultural communication, but
of some of the competences necessary in intercultural communication –
competences that I believe can be taught and assessed. It is a model for
planning and implementing teaching; it is not a model of learning. It is, as
we shall see, a model which derives much more from ethnography than
applied linguistics, which previously dominated as the ‘reference disci-
pline’ for language teaching. Learners become ethnographers rather than
applied linguists.
If the model is used for other purposes than teaching, users should be
aware of its original purpose and the limitations this involves. A corollary
of this is that there have been criticisms of the model for what it is not, for
not doing what it does not claim to do. Of course people are entitled to
10 Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence

understand and use it as they wish, but insofar as they go beyond my

intention – stated I hope clearly enough – I do not take responsibility for
or defend inadequacies, or attempt to remedy them.
It is a competence model, but not a reductive one. In the fi rst edition I
used ‘competence’ unreflectingly and I might have been justifiably criti-
cised for this, but this has not, as far as I know, happened. Since then I
have improved my understanding of ‘competence’, notably with the help
of my colleague and friend Mike Fleming (2008, 2009), and am happy to
think retrospectively that I did not use the notion in a reductive way, as I
might have been tempted to do. Nonetheless, the use of the notion does
imply a particular mode of education, one which plans and assesses by
objectives with the expectation that learners will acquire increasingly
complex competences as they ‘progress’. The challenge is to ensure that
this approach does not ignore difficult dimensions of what should be
learnt in general education (or Bildung), e.g. the values as well as the
skills, attitudes and knowledge which are more easily described in behav-
ioural and observable terms.8
Finally, this is not a handbook. There are several handbooks of differ-
ent kinds which readers new to the field can use (e.g. Bennett, 2014;
Deardorff, 2009; Jackson, 2020; Straub et al., 2007). I have resisted the
temptation to engage with the many developments that have happened
since 1997 except where they are directly relevant.

Notes
(1) I have added this new sentence as I have been misunderstood as being focused only on
‘foreign’ languages and peoples. Making this explicit will, I hope, ensure that the
following sentences and the text as a whole are read more carefully.
(2) Ironically, as I review the text one more time, in April 2020, I am, like the vast major-
ity of people in the world, isolated and forbidden to travel – and in any case there is
scarcely any means of public transport – because of the Corona/COVID-19 crisis. On
a daily basis I read that this crisis will change the world, with much speculation about
what this might mean, and of course as I write we cannot know. Having spent three
years, while writing my PhD, living in the 1920s, the events of the ‘Spanish flu’ and
the aftermath of World War I are on my mind. One change following from these two
events was a move to internationalism and away from nationalism, at least for a
decade. Nationalism has again become dominant in the world, both before and
during the current crisis, and the need for internationalist intercultural thinking and
the contribution that language teaching can make is greater than ever. Unfortunately,
in the 1920s in Britain, language teaching did not live up to the challenge (Byram,
2018a). I hope that it will do so in the 2020s (Byram, 2018b).
(3) In my own case – to remember older generations too – it was the 1914–1918 war that
sent my grandfather for the fi rst time out of his village to other parts of his own coun-
try and then to another country, and the 1939–1945 war did the same for my father.
(4) That tourism is becoming self-defeating, destroying what people travel to see, is
increasingly evident. As I write this, Amsterdam is developing a new policy to change
tourist habits and reduce the damage caused.
(5) It is also noteworthy that, as Taylor (1965: 1) says: ‘Until August 1914 a sensible law-
abiding Englishman [sic] could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of
 Introduction 11

the state, beyond the post-office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and
as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave
his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission.’ Such mobil-
ity was, however, only for the few, the tourist on ‘the grand tour’ and perhaps the
self-exile. Today we need at least one passport and having more helps in many
circumstances.
(6) The distinction between ‘evaluation’ and ‘assessment’ is not easily made in some
European languages, and bilingual dictionaries often translate these two English
words with one single word, with the same etymological roots as ‘evaluation’. The
distinction can be briefly defi ned as follows:
Assessment is ‘The measurement of a learner’s potential for attainment, or of
their actual attainment.’ (Oxford Dictionary of Education)
This term is generally used to cover all methods of establishing an individual’s capac-
ity in some aspect of what they have learnt, irrespective of whether they have learnt
as a result of being taught in an educational setting or as a consequence of learning
through experience. Assessment is often used synonymously with ‘testing’, but it is
more useful and accurate to consider testing and tests as one type of assessment.
Evaluation is ‘The measuring of the effectiveness of a lesson, course, or pro-
gramme of study.’ (Oxford Dictionary of Education)
Evaluation is the study and reporting of a phenomenon – in our case an aspect of
education – to assist an audience to determine its merit and value. The fi rst is a matter
of professional standards and the second a matter of societal or individual need. For
example, we may wish to know whether the teaching of a specific subject such as
astrology is being carried out efficiently and effectively, and the evaluation may show
that this is the case. On the other hand, we may wish to know if it is important to
teach astrology in our society and the evaluation may show that this is not the case.
(7) There have been several critiques of the fi rst version of this book for its supposed
focus on ‘national cultures’ (e.g. Boye, 2016; Matsuo, 2012). Baker (2015: 152–153)
also argues that my focus is on national cultures, but this is based on a misreading of
‘communities and countries’ and of ‘communities and societies’. He – and many
others – misses the distinction between a community and a society: that within one
society there are many communities and their associated cultures. This is not a case
of ‘methodological nationalism’ even though the examples used in foreign language
teaching may suggest this. I should perhaps have clarified the distinctions in case they
were not known, although the distinction between community and society
(Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, in Tönnies’s original words) is an old one. These
commentators also miss the point I made at the very beginning of the monograph that
the model could be used to describe communication of people of diff erent communi-
ties within the same society. I hope that is no longer possible after my clarifications in
this version. I shall return to the question of national cultures in a later chapter.
(8) In the early stages of my teaching and training career, there was much emphasis on
‘de-schooling’ on ‘progressive education’. This disappeared in teacher education in
England, as education became ‘training’ and a reductive view of competence teaching
was introduced. The challenge of de-schooling and similar concepts was invigorating,
as was the world of the Danish ‘friskole’ which I studied. Language teaching and
learning was a challenge for those who implemented these reforming and in some
respects revolutionary ideas. Unfortunately, the challenge disappeared as baby and
bathwater were thrown out together.