CULTURAL DISSONANCE IN THE SECOND LANGUAGE CLASSROOM

The English language continues to grow in importance as the favored medium of cross-cultural discourse around the globe drawing many to study English as a second or foreign language (ESL, EFL). As the population of college-level English language learners increases, Second Language Acquisition (SLA) researchers and ESL teachers have sought ways of preparing them to succeed in their coursework efficiently and effectively. This task, however, has been complicated by acknowledgment among some in the SLA field that cultural beliefs, values, and norms are necessarily implicated explicitly and implicitly in language classroom interactions. However questions around what culture is, how it manifests itself in second language classroom interactions, and to what effect remain hotly debated.