Respond to: Beyond Categories
Taking a course called Intercultural Perspectives in Multicultural Education this semester have me realized that being a foreign language (Chinese) teacher simply to disseminate language knowledge, such as vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation, is far from sufficient. In order to nurture students who are truly able to appropriately communicate verbally and culturally, we also

need to have students to be aware of the voice of tone, gesture, and spatial relationship transmitted through the language the speaker used. Which we refer to as the culture pertaining to the language. So far, we regard intercultural communication as a teaching perspective for language teachers who are responsible to instill a second or a foreign language to their students.
Reading this article have me further realized that intercultural issues are not the only manifest between students from different nations, different backgrounds, and different ethnicity. It could also be evident within oneself who possesses multiple ethnicities, or needs to identify with different subcultures. Intercultural awareness surely is not only language teachers needed to possess, but all the teachers across all content areas. I am wondering with the endeavor of all educators on diminishing students’ intercultural ignorance, it would be a lot easier for foreign language teacher who may only see the students once or twice a week, to address the communicative differences among different languages.