This book deals with the problem of elaborating the communicative experience of the learner using English for academic purposes in a multilingual context.

Focussing on a specific academic college community in a semi-urban Indian situation and the student of Science in Particular, it provides useful insights into the nature of interaction in the classroom, the learner’s awareness of worthwhile teaching-learning experiences and the language teacher’s competence for encouraging participatory learning.

Using an ethnographic approach, the culture of the curriculum is analysed using classroom observation, discourse analysis, questionnaire and interviews, to provide a profile of the learner and a description of existing teacher competence. It is found that the learner’s communicative experience is highly restricted by the communicative functions that define interaction in the curriculum. Considering the learner’s awareness of good learning opportunities, the need for a more relevant curriculum is posited. The implications are that restructuring the English curriculum needs to be perceived in terms of the execution of a series of deliberations in individual academic communities for advancing existing cultural competence, which includes skills of participatory teaching-learning and meaning negotiation in communicatively challenging contexts. The ethnographic approach is projected to be a means of investigation and subsequently a means for creating fresh expectancies among teachers and learners.

This book demonstrates a breakthrough in effective curriculum planning based on a qualitative understanding of cultural competence in academic communities. It should prove to be useful for teacher trainers, educational planners, curriculum designers as well as students and teachers in the field of English Language Teaching. It also serves as a base-line study for further research.