... "We should not resign ourselves to offering the learner cut-and-dried abstractions of living human interaction in the form of stylised  native speaker interaction. Not even if we do give practical hints as to cultural differences under headings like civilisation or Deutschlandkunde.

We need to become somewhat more sophisticated in what we provide as input. And we can do so by looking closely at what really happens in cross-cultural communication. I intend to offer two examples of realistic cross-cultural communication, analyse them with the help of a model of the verbal communication process, and suggest a solution, which to me embodies the European (or international) dimension of foreign language teaching: the negociation of culturally different knowledge. A rewriting of one of the dialogues is offered by way of illustration of this solution. My contention is that negociation tools to identify and possibly overcome cultural differences, and their practice, should be introduced into foreign language teaching. I also maintain that foreign language teaching, irrespective of the dictates of the home culture, should make it its business to bring home to the learner that communicating cross-culturally is more than just putting your own ideas about reality, interaction and life in general, logically into the words and speech-acts of the foreign language."

Gerard M. WILLEMS, The European dimension in cross-cultural communication: the negociation of social knowledge, Europe Plurilingue, N° Spécial Traduction, mars 1998.