Due to the rapidly expanding internationalization of various sectors, such as business, science, and technology, the need for cross-cultural communication at an individual, national, and global level has been increasing. This social situation naturally provides individual language learners with tremendous opportunities to interact cross-culturally and to raise their awareness of the value of English in cross-cultural communication. What follows is primarily concerned with the teaching situation and the learning environment of Japanese students of English, both in monolingual and multilingual settings. Firstly, in the monolingual setting in Japan, traditionally the methods, curriculum, and examination system have emphasized knowledge of the language and paid scant attention to communicative ability or to the strategies required by speakers in social contexts. As a result, in spite of several years of learning experience, most Japanese learners of English are not sufficiently confident to place themselves in authentic cross-cultural communicative contexts. As a result of increasing polarization between what are held to be westernizing influences, and the reassertion of traditional Japanese values, the gulf between what students are taught and what they acquire, which is required for effective cross-cultural communication is, if anything, widening.