In this article, the author provides a brief response to Claire Kramsch's paper. While the author agrees in many ways with her arguments, he also wants to point to a potential contradiction between two positions: On the one hand, Kramsch suggests that in promoting foreign language learning language educators run the danger of essentialising the…

This article presents the author's response to Alastair Pennycook and Azirah Hashim. In this article, the author contends that learning a foreign language should not lock learners in an imagined homogeneous target culture, despite the efforts of textbooks to reinforce stereotypes and some learners' desire to identify with an essentialised Other.…