How Does Culture Relate to Teaching English as an International Language?

Sammanfattning: The goal of this research synthesis is to look at how culture is related to EIL, which is still a new area that is continuously developing. There is an extensive look at the role of interculturality and intercultural communicative competence and its connection to EIL; it has become apparent that culture in English is still rooted in old practices. These old practices are primarily that English culture teaching is still centered on the culture of the inner circle native speakers’ countries. However, this new area is one of importance to EIL and this synthesis explores how culture is relevant and how it can be taught in the EIL classroom. Our findings show that the role of English can be stated as the tool that makes students accomplished crosscultural communicators. The focus on culture teaching in ELT now aims at cultural diversity to develop students as intercultural speakers in a globalized context. Furthermore, students need to develop self-awareness, evaluation stereotyping towards other cultures and change in their perception of and view of cultural learning in the English classroom. The goal becomes to develop interculturality and intercultural communicative competence that challenges their perceptions of other cultures and compares them to their own culture.