The book deals with the question how students in multicultural EFL-classrooms can be prepared for their role as world citizens. The author shows that teaching English offers important potentials for cosmopolitan education due to its role as a «lingua franca». The study develops the construct cosmopolitan communicative competence as a theoretical framework. It also presents a teaching approach that combines students’ life-writing with the discussion of literary texts to advance the associated knowledge, skills and attitudes. The potentials of this approach are evaluated through the assessment of students’ competence development.

Mirja Beutel is a lecturer in teacher education at the Ruhr-University Bochum. She holds a PhD and has longstanding teaching experience in secondary schools. Her research interests are transcultural language learning, learning with digital media and Content and Language Integrated Learning.