As established in the Introduction chapter of this book, the field of foreign language teaching is now beginning to take seriously the contention that language learning needs to be reconceptualized as an intercultural endeavour. While the notions of communicative competence and intercultural competence have different disciplinary origins and have tended to be treated separately, it is time to see intercultural competence as a central part of developing the ability to communicate in a foreign language. Intercultural competence is not something that you develop after you have enough foreign language competence; the development of foreign language competence itself is an intercultural engagement. Right from the beginning of learning, learners engage with the foreign language on the basis of their existing perspectives on the world – on people, relationships and actions – and engage in various levels of intercultural mediation throughout the learning process. The act of interpreting and constructing meanings constantly engages learners' knowledge, assumptions, values, and their sense of self and who they want to be. However, there is no guarantee that such constituents of what I have called interpretive architecture will rise to learners' consciousness without teacher support. The argument that I have presented in this book is that learners need to be actively encouraged to explore the intercultural dimensions of language learning, specifically to begin to look at language use as a form of culturally variable social action. Some teachers might think that such a goal is unattainable in a foreign language teaching context, particularly when access to authentic materials and opportunities to use the language outside the classroom cannot be guaranteed. My aim has been to show that such concerns are unfounded.

Of course, it would be unrealistic to claim that learners could develop an intercultural perspective on language use within one particular course, just as one would not claim that aspects of grammar, vocabulary or pragmatics could be mastered within one course.