Ouvertures uses culture as the organizing principle to its communicative approach in the teaching of speaking, reading, listening, and writing. Ouvertures offers content--based instruction where a cultural theme serves as a unifying element within each chapter. It promotes a contrastive approach to culutre that encourages (self--)exploration rather than judgments. And, finally, Ouvertures seeks to provide a manageable amount of material while paying throrough and appropriately distributed attention to all five skills.