intercultural competence in foreign language teaching

today, in times of globalisation, intercultural competence is required more than ever before. therefore, language institutes are advocating and keen to train their students in intercultural competence too. accordingly, they ensure that their teachers include teaching additional cultural information about the country of the language being taught in their courses. the fact is, however, that during intercultural communications, people are not confronted with the foreign culture. they are rather confronted with a new third culture, which develops because of actions and reactions between their own and the foreign culture . the content of this third, new developed culture, so called interculture, can’t be fully predicted and is not easily referable to communication conventions of the first culture, nor to the communication conventions of the second culture. because of this , pure cultural knowledge will not result in gaining intercultural competence and is not enough to master intercultural communication situations successfully.