Introduction

In the past few decades, language and culture have been placed at the heart of foreign language education by many scholars (Damen, 1987; Galloway, 1999; Jones, 2000; Kramsch, 1998; Van Ek, 1986). Language learning has increasingly focused on the development of both linguistic and cultural fluency, as the one does not necessarily imply the other. It is possible for progress in foreign language proficiency to take place separately from knowledge and understanding of another culture. However, it is increasingly felt that to communicate effectively across cultures a speaker 'needs the right mix of linguistic, sociolinguistic, socio-cultural and strategic competences' (Álvarez & Garrido, 2001: 152). Despite this recognised critical intersection between language and culture, Cohen et al. (2005: 16) have pointed out that language students aim to acquire linguistic proficiency but still 'lack strategies for culture learning and do not have a coherent overall plan for learning the culture or developing intercultural communication skills'.

This situation is not surprising since there has been little guidance on the learning of strategies and development of skills for intercultural communication. The specification of intercultural objectives in language programmes, that is, those that aim to bridge gaps between the target culture and one's own culture, rarely include specific training in cultural and intercultural strategies and, much less so, explicit training in integrated language, cultural and intercultural strategy learning and use. As Willems (2002: 10) has described, interculturality is a complex 'moral-ethical' dimension of foreign language education that requires 'knowledge (of cultural factors), insight (into what constitutes cultural identity), readiness (towards opening up to cultural differences) and skills (in negotiating "common territory" and identifying and bridging gaps)'. Moreover, the widely adopted formula 'intercultural communicative competence' (Byram, 1997) recognises the challenge of incorporating this dimension into language education.