The document discusses the concept of intercultural competence (ICC) in language teaching. It defines ICC as developing learners' ability to engage with complexity and multiple identities without stereotyping. ICC involves developing intercultural attitudes, knowledge of social groups, skills in interpreting and relating other cultures, skills in interacting across cultures, and critical cultural awareness. The intercultural dimension in language teaching aims to help learners understand intercultural interaction and how identities and perceptions influence communication. Developing ICC means learners can manage intercultural exchanges with openness, relativize their own perspectives, and acknowledge other views.

1. The Intercultural Dimension in
LanguageTeaching

2. What is ICC?
‘transcending the
limitations of one’s own
world view’
(Fantini 2000, p.31)

3. Through an education for ICC:
 We open up to other ways of thinking
and other ways of logic
 We find a tongue in which we can
speak our humanity to each other
 We learn to see that our own view of
the world is just one among many
(Willems 2002: 19)

4. THE 'INTERCULTURAL DIMENSION'
The intercultural
dimension in language
teaching aims to develop
learners as intercultural
speakers or mediators who
are able to engage with
complexity and multiple
identities and to avoid the
stereotyping which
accompanies perceiving
someone through a single
identity.

7. Intercultural competences, Byram, 1997, 2011.

8. Intercultural attitudes
(savoir être):
curiosity and openness,
readiness to suspend disbelief
about other cultures and belief
about one’s own
This means a willingness to
relativize one's own values,
beliefs and behaviors, not to
assume that they are the only
possible and naturally correct
ones, and to be able to see how
they might look from an
outsider's perspective who has
a different set of values, beliefs
and behaviors. This can be
called the ability to 'decentre'.

9. Knowledge (savoirs) of social groups
and their products and practices in
one’s own
and in one’s interlocutor’s country,
and of the general processes of
societal and individual interaction.
So knowledge can be defined as
having two major components:
knowledge of social processes, and
knowledge of illustrations of those
processes and products; the latter
includes knowledge about how other
people are likely to perceive you, as
well as some knowledge about other
people.

10. Skills of interpreting and
relating (savoir
comprendre): ability to
interpret a document or
event from another
culture, to explain it and
relate it to documents or
events from one’s own

11. Skills of discovery and interaction (savoir
apprendre/faire): ability to acquire new
knowledge of a culture and cultural practices
and the ability to operate knowledge,
attitudes and skills under the constraints of
real-time communication and interaction.

12. Critical cultural
awareness (savoir
s'engager): an ability
to evaluate, critically
and on the basis of
explicit criteria,
perspectives, practices
and products in one’s
own and other cultures
and countries.

13. The intercultural dimension is
concerned with
- helping to understand how
intercultural interaction takes
place,
- how social identities are part of
all interaction,
- how perceptions of other
people and others people's
perceptions influence the
success of communication
- how to find out for oneself more
about the people with whom they
are communicating.

14. Additionally, a language learner who has
been taught culture as an integral part of the
foreign language curriculum is an individual
trained and able to manage interculturality
with deep criticism and strong analytic
patterns to so that s/he can:
1) observe, identify and recognize elements
from the cognitive, the normative and the
symbolic components of culture;
2) compare and contrast her/his own L1
culture with the target (L2) culture
effectively;
3) negotiate meaning and limit the
possibility of misinterpretation;
4) deal with or tolerate ambiguity;
5) effectively interpret messages;
6) accept differences and
7) defend her/ his own point of view while
acknowledging the legitimacy of others.
Moreover, s/he becomes culturally aware
and proficient as s/he develops formal
language devises representing the whole
of the L2 cultural spheres.

16. At the edge of the woods there was a
pond, and there a minnow and a
tadpole swam among the weeds.
They were inseparable friends.

17. One morning the
tadpole discovered
that during the night
he had grown two
little legs.
‘Look,’ he said
triumphantly. ‘Look, I
am a frog!’
‘Nonsense,’ said the
minnow. ‘How could
you be a frog if only
last night you were a
little fish, just like
me!’

18. In the weeks
that followed,
the tadpole
grew tiny front
legs and his
tail got smaller
and smaller.

19. And then one fine day, a real frog now, he
climbed out of the water and onto the grassy
bank.

20. The minnow too had grown and had become a
fully-fledged fish. He often wondered where his
four-footed friend had gone. But days and weeks
went by and the frog did not return.

21. Then one day, with a happy
splash that shook the
weeds, the frog jumped
into the pond.
‘Where have you been?’
asked the fish excitedly.
‘I have been about the
world, hopping here and
there,’ said the frog, ‘and I
have seen extraordinary
things.’ ‘Like what?’ asked
the fish.
‘Birds,’ said the frog
mysteriously.
‘Birds!’ And he told the fish
about the birds who had
wings, and two legs, and
many, many colours.

22. As the frog
talked, his friend
saw the birds fly
through his mind
like large
feathered fish.
‘What else?’
asked the fish
impatiently.

23. ‘Cows,’ said
the frog.
‘Cows!’ They
have four
legs, horns,
eat grass,
and carry
pink bags of
milk.’

24.  And people!’
said the frog.
‘Men, women,
children!’
And he talked
and talked until
it was dark in
the pond.

25. But the picture in
the fish’s mind
was full of lights
and colours and
marvellous things
and he couldn’t
sleep.
«Ah, if he could
only jump about
like his friend, and
see that wonderful
world!”.

26. One day he
finally decided
that come what
may, he too
must see them.
And so, with a
mighty whack of
the tail, he
jumped clear
out of the water
onto the bank.

27. He landed in the
dry, warm grass
and there he lay
gasping for air,
unable to
breathe or to
move.
‘Help,’ he
groaned feebly.

28. Luckily the
frog, who had
been hunting
butterflies
nearby, saw
him and with
all his strength
pushed him
back into the
pond.

29. Still stunned, the fish floated about for an
instant. Then he breathed deeply, letting the
clean cool water run through his gills. Now he
felt weightless again and with an ever-so-
slight motion of the tail he could move to and
fro, up and down, as before. The sunrays
reached down within the weeds and gently
shifted patches of luminous colour. This
world was surely the most beautiful of all
worlds. He smiled at his friend the frog, who
sat watching from a lily leaf.
‘You were right,’ he said.
‘Fish is fish’.

30. One intercultural experience
“I was part of an international group of colleagues about
to enter an Austrian restaurant for an evening meal. Next
to me was an Austrian gentleman who, as soon as we got
to the door rushed to open it. At first I thought he was
really polite and so I quickly moved forward towards the
door. However, to my amazement, he stepped ahead of
me, and entered before me.”

31. The Austrian gentleman had the
relevant intercultural competences :
 A competence in resolving
conflict, clarifying
misunderstanding
 A competence in mediation
 A competence of
decentring
 A competence in
recognising the ‘other’

32. ICC is NOT simply about learning to look at
the world through somebody else’s pair of
glasses
“Nor is the new competence kept entirely
separate from the old. The learner
does not simply acquire two distinct,
unrelated ways of acting and
communicating”

33. As the language learner becomes
plurilingual and develops interculturality:
“The linguistic and cultural
competences in respect of each
language are modified by knowledge
of the other...”

34. ICC involves
A conscious understanding of the
process of adaptation
A high degree of meta-linguistic, meta-cognitive,
and other meta- capabilities
-

35. ICC is NOT
An approach to changing our natural
behaviour
“The learner of a second or foreign language
and culture does not cease to be
competent in his or her mother tongue and
the associated culture.”

36. “Linguistic and cultural competences...
enable the individual to develop an
enriched, more complex personality and
enhanced capacity for further language
learning and greater openness to new
cultural experiences.”

37. Fin de esta sesión

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