“Majority” and “Minority” Student Interaction in the ELT Class

The following study focuses on the cultural aspects of language teaching, specifically, the impact of a multicultural environment on language acquisition in the English class. Its aim is to investigate students’ attitudes towards a specific disruptive condition: the use of a non-English L1 by the majority of students, a language that serves to alienate the minority who do not comprehend it. While “cultural” is not to be taken as a synonym for “linguistic”, the two are invariably tied, for the obvious reason that natives of one cultural environment frequently share a common language different from the L1 of natives of a different environment. The findings suggest that a multicultural and multilingual context has a possible negative bearing on English language acquisition, if persistent use of the majority's L1 is allowed.