Teaching modern foreign languages is not all about communicative skills. It is also about testing functional abilities. While we still pay lip service to the creed of communicative language teaching, we have adopted test formats and teaching styles that follow a hidden agenda: the production of human capital. The main objective of teaching is…

This paper examines the ideological underpinnings of the English as an Additional Language (EAL) curriculum that drive the practice of secondary teachers in Victoria, Australia, and how students' needs and rights are seen and addressed in and through English discourse and hegemony. Bakhtin's (1986) dialogic approach and van Lier's (1996) AAA…

Culture awareness has become an important focus of modern language education, a shift that reflects a greater awareness of the inseparability of language and culture, and the need to prepare students for intercultural communication. The paper reports on an ongoing study into the presence and status of cultural understanding in EFL teaching. In…