Teaching cross-cultural communication issues - a way of successfully integrating into the multicultural knowledge society

Since one of the purposes of education in the 21(st) century is our coping with the multicultural knowledge society, we have to prepare to acknowledge its differences in terms of cultural values, communication and behaviour patterns, habits and attitudes. This theoretical paper argues that an English language course in a technical university should aim at developing the students' awareness of cultural differences, their communicative and cultural competence. The argument lies in the fact that cross-cultural understanding and cultural knowledge for politically-correct approaches are key issues to be considered for a safe and successful integration into our multicultural knowledge society. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.