ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Michael Byram's intercultural communicative competence model. His model was ground-breaking and has had a profound impact on many language scholars and teachers. This critique of Byram's model will focus on cultural aspects of language teaching. It aims to explore concepts of culture, the relationship between culture and language–and between culture teaching and language teaching–and the relevance of these models to the non-native English-speaking countries. Byram's 1989 model for integrating teaching culture into foreign-language teaching raised theoretical and pedagogical issues, including teaching content, and teacher training. Byram's contribution relies on a wider recognition the value of cultural and intercultural dimensions in foreign-language education. Byram's model, which is developed in the United Kingdom context, seemed to prioritise the "inside process" or "one-way process," which has been referred to as "the intrapersonal process" by Rohrlich, P. By employing the notions of intercultural speaker, intercultural mediator, and intercultural citizenship rather than the native speaker, Byram recognised the sophistication and complication of society.
