How culturally appropriate is the communicative approach?

How culturally appropriate is the communicative approach? By Greg Ellis (1996)

New words
-The astronaut was attuned to weightlessness in space.
-Shyness inhibited the new student from talking freely in class.
-They needed to assimilate their way of thinking to new surroundings.
-Promotion is dependent on ability. (=Promotion depends on ability.)
-She was vacillating between two possible courses of action.
-The movie based on the novel distorted the original story.

Summary
Communicative approaches help students communicate with native speakers and communicative competence is regarded as linguistic knowledge and ‘the skill in using this knowledge’. This is used for Asian students as well. However, it has unsuitable aspects because groups are focused, process is important, meaning is emphasized rather than form and approach is teacher-centered in Asia. There is misunderstanding between ESL and EFL. English as a second language (ESL) is for development of communication competence within an English-speaking environment. The role of the ESL teacher is a facilitator using student-centred approach. On the other hand, English as a foreign language (EFL) is designed for the national curriculum or government policy and students don’t have to communicate using the target language outside the classroom in a daily life. Due to the cross-cultural interaction, students tend to experience culture shock and various kinds of responses are observed; ‘over-assimilation’ and ‘self-segregation’ (Skutnabb-Kangas and Phillipson, 1983), rejection or exaggerating their first culture; rejecting or exaggerating their second culture; vacillating between the two culture or synthesizing them (Bochner, 1982), and so forth. Therefore, the ideal role of the EFL teacher is a cultural mediator. ‘Integration between Western and Eastern teaching practices’ can be useful in an Asian setting.