English as cultural action

This article places the teaching and learning of English as a foreign language in its cultural contexts: the culture of the native speaker of English on the one hand and that of the learner on the other. The tension which arises when the two cultures come into contact is examined in both the social and the classroom contexts. It is assumed that an ethno-centric response to the tension makes learning more difficult and that the native-speaker teacher would do well to recognize the international status of English and to work from local varieties of English.