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Culture is defined by the National Center for Cultural Competence as an "integrated pattern of human behavior that includes thoughts, communications, languages, practices, beliefs, values, customs, courtesies, rituals, manners of interacting and roles, relationships and expected behaviors of a racial, ethnic, religious or social group; and the ability to transmit the above to succeeding generations" (Goode et al, 2000, cited in Peterson and Coltrane, 2003). Thereof, language is nearly always a means of conveying culture; it is the mirror through which culture can appear. Also, it is through culture how linguistic messages are encoded, i.e., the use of language is directed and controlled by culture. To exemplify, the way and the language one uses in saluting others are determined by one's own culture. Therefore, both language and culture are inextricably interrelated. To finally add before starting some cross-cultural compatibilities and incompatibilities, Buttjes (1990, cited in AbiSamra, 2001) shows the reasons of why language and culture are from the start inseparably connected as follows:

1. language acquisition does not follow a universal sequence, but differs across cultures;

2. the process of becoming a competent member of society is realized through exchanges of language in particular social situations;

3. every society orchestrates the ways in which children participate in particular situations, and this, in turn, affects the form, the function and the content of children's utterances;

4. caregivers' primary concern is not with grammatical input, but with the transmission of sociocultural knowledge;

5. the native learner, in addition to language, acquires also the paralinguistic patterns and the kinesics of his or her culture.

There are a lot of cultures inhabiting our universe. Each culture has its own customs, beliefs, values, and behaviors among others. In other words, every culture has its own componential cultural patterns. Such patterns may converge or diverge among cultures. The degree of divergence and convergence oscillates in an obviously observed way. To clarify, what is essential, vivid, fundamental, and valuable in one culture may be the same or can be neutral, valueless, relatively accepted, totally rejected, normal, or a taboo as to other cultures. So, cultures usually intermingle, i.e., they have some or maybe sometimes many cultural patterns in common. Peterson and Coltrane (2003) state that "cultures are not monolithic." Still, it is postulated that each culture has some if not many particular cultural patterns that are not shared by other cultures. Such are called culture-specific patterns and the shared patterns are called culture-general (cf. AbiSamra, 2001).

What concerns us in this article is to compare some cultural patterns from the societies of the USA and the UK - the two representatives of the English culture when we come to discuss culture incorporation in the process of teaching English as a foreign language (cf. Genc & Bada, 2005) - with some patterns from some Middle Eastern countries that teach English as a foreign language in their schools. It could be too early to say that cultural incompatibilities can impede the process of teaching English properly. But by having a glance at the cultural distance between the liberal West and the conservative East, one can assume that such a distance may seriously affect English language teaching as being affected by culture. A lot of cultural values in the West are classified as pestilent and demolishing according to some Eastern cultures. Alcoholic drinks, bars, discos, and some kinds of sexual relationships among others are all considered as first-class taboos. . .

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