Critical investigation of intercultural communication instruction: Building Mainland Chinese university students' critical language awareness and intercultural literacy

Although recent research on English as a lingua franca has challenged the ownership of English, the native ideology persists and curriculum design and teaching materials still largely remain oriented to native-speakerism. Recognising the importance of critical linguistic and cultural literacy instruction, this chapter reviews an intercultural communication course with additional reading materials to introduce critical linguistic and cultural literacy concepts. By reading and discussing articles, students learned to challenge the textbook contents from a critical perspective and developed their critical intercultural literacy. Through the analysis of student interviews and reflective journal entries, this chapter unpacks the importance of critical pedagogy and cultural literacy in English language teaching (ELT) and concludes that ELT must be done from a multilingual and multicultural perspective. Copyright © 2019 The Author(s).