Community and culture in intercultural language learning

This paper addresses changing meanings attached to the concept of community in languages education in the school setting in Australia. The change consists of a shift from community as a necessary definitional category, created in the mid 1970s to mark the recognition of languages other than English used in the Australian community, to a recognition, in the current context of increasing mobility of people and ideas, of the need to problematise the concept of community towards working with the complexity of the lived, dynamic languages and cultures in the repertoires of students. Intercultural language learning is discussed as a way of thinking about communities in languages education in current times. Copyright 2007 Angela Scarino. No part of this article may be reproduced by any means without the written consent of the publisher.