Departments of foreign languages in Taiwan have been in existence for more than four decades. Facing social, political and economic changes, globally and locally, the faculties of these departments are confronted with new challenges internally in terms of teaching content and goal-settings and externally in terms of educational policies promoted and enforced by the government.
A revolutionary curriculum change is not feasible and not advisable. Adding new teaching and researching dimensions, concretely speaking in this case, adding intercultural research to the programs of foreign language studies is practical, as it can be closely connected to the main body of courses in these departments.
In addition to engagement in intercultural research, the members of the faculty of foreign language departments can offer intercultural training to the students, to managers and diplomats who will have extensive contacts with people of other cultures. Some of these ”clients” are going to be dispatched to overseas tours of duty or are going as exchange students, others might emigrate. Black/Mendenhall (1989), Stahl (1998), Konradt/Behr (2002), Bolten (2007) have been engaged in intercultural trainings. In this paper the author tries to point out the development of this new dimension in the curricula of foreign language department based on the theories of the above mentioned scholars.
