ABSTRACT
After many years when second language teaching specialists were primarily concerned with instructional technology, the question of introducing cultural content into second language instruction curricula has once more begun to receive a great deal of attention. A frequently heard argument is that, in today's global economy, where international organizations proliferate and multinational organizations have come to assume ever increasing importance, mere instrumental control of foreign languages is no longer enough. Increasingly, individuals who grew up in different parts of the world under historically and culturally quite distinct circumstances must work together and cooperate as equal partners in the same enterprises. It can readily be shown that (a) cooperating in a foreign language requires more than just knowledge of grammar and lexicon, and, (b) to the extent that cultures differ, communication tends to become more and more problematic (Gumperz, 1982). Thus interlocutors should have at least some understanding of their audience's cultural background to make themselves understood. Yet so far foreign language courses have made no systematic efforts to deal with this issue.
