Intercultural Communicative Competence: Obstacles Faced by NESTs, NNESTs and Learners

This paper looks at three possible actors in the ELT classroom: learners, non-native English speaking teachers (NNEST) and native English speaking teachers (NEST). Each particular group has a need to acquire the skill of intercultural competence. For the learners, it is a necessary element alongside their knowledge of the language to be effective in real-life intercultural communications. For the teachers, it is to be sensitive to their learners from other cultures, to have a neutral bias to whichever of the L1 or L2 cultures is not their own, and also to enable incorporation of intercultural content effectively into the English lesson. The paper examines the obstacles to achieving Intercul…