This volume attempts to address an issue that deserves further attention on the part of language acquisition researchers: that of intercultural learners in instructed language contexts. Given the fact that most speech communities where such learning takes place are at least bilingual, and the idea that English is studied for the purposes of communication among people from different cultures, the book focuses on English learners as intercultural speakers. In so doing, the volume brings together three main research areas: those of the study of English as a lingua franca, the development of communicative competence and the use and acquisition of a language beyond a second one in instructed contexts.

This book is for researchers with an interest in the field of second/foreign language acquisition and use, scholars examining learner variables in instructional contexts, and scholars adopting a sociolinguistic perspective in the study of oral discourse and languages in contact.

Zusammenfassung
Eva Alcón Soler Maria Pilar Safont Jordà Universitat Jaume I, Spain The main purpose of the present book is to broaden the scope of research on the development of intercultural communicative competence. Bearing this purpose in mind, English learners are considered as intercultural speakers who share their interest for engaging in real life communication. According to Byram and Fleming (1998), the intercultural speaker is someone with knowledge of one or more cultures and social identities, and who enjoys discovering and maintaining relationships with people from other cultural backgrounds, although s/he has not been formally trained for that purpose. Besides, possessing knowledge of at least two cultures is the case of many learners in bilingual or multilingual communities. In these contexts, the objective of language learning should then focus on developing intercultural competence, which in turn may involve promoting language diversity while encouraging English as both a means and anend of instruction (see Alcón, this volume). This is the idea underlying the volume, which further sustains Kramsch's argument (1998) against the native/ non-native dichotomy. Following that author, we also believe that in a multilingual world where learners may belong to more than one speech community, their main goal is not to become a native speaker of English, but to use this language as a tool for interaction among many other languages and cultures.

Inhalt
What Is an 'Intercultural Speaker'?.- Linguistic Unity and Cultural Diversity in Europe: Implications for Research on English Language and Learning.- Rethinking the Role of Communicative Competence in Language Teaching.- Dealing with Intercultural Communicative Competence in the Foreign Language Classroom.- A Role for English as Lingua Franca in the Foreign Language Classroom?.- Writing-to-learn in Instructed Language Learning Contexts.- The Acquisition of Pragmatic Competence and Multilingualism in Foreign Language Contexts.- Interindividual Variation in Self-perceived Oral Proficiency of English L2 Users.- Pragmatic Production of Third Language Learners: A Focus on Request External Modification Items.- North Korean Schools in Japan: An Observation of Quasi-Native Heritage Language Use in Teaching English as a Third Language.- Examining Mitigation in Requests: A Focus on Transcripts in ELT Coursebooks.- The Presentation and Practice of the Communicative Act of Requesting in Textbooks:Focusing on Modifiers.- Analysing Request Modification Devices in Films: Implications for Pragmatic Learning in Instructed Foreign Language Contexts.