Why is cross-cultural awareness important in language training
and learning? Take the lingua franca of the international
business world, for instance. Today, countries and organisations
across the globe do business in a common language, English. Many
European and Asian countries teach English as the second
language to their children. After the dissolution of the former
communist USSR, English became the favoured language of many
former soviet republics aiming to become a part of the global
society. Georgia, for instance, made a key linguistic switch:
English mandatory for all students whereas Russian was optional.
With all this investment in English language teaching, are
learners across the globe speaking the same language? And are
they speaking it the same way? You may learn the technical parts
such as grammar and punctuation, but what about the nuances,
about what words connote and not simply denote? Moreover, does
your cultural identity determine the style and register in your
usage of the world’s lingua