Interculturalism in Moroccan Institutions: The Case of Secondary Education in the French Language

Didactics and language pedagogy place great importance on integrating the intercultural dimension into language teaching. This concern is also present in the Moroccan education system, which has undertaken a reform aimed, among other things, at developing intercultural competence. However, despite these ambitions, a survey conducted among French as a Foreign Language (FLE) teachers in the Rabat-Salé-Kénitra region, specifically in the Skhirat-Témara prefecture, revealed that most of these teachers do not have a clear understanding of the concepts of cultural and intercultural competences, even though the FLE teaching programs explicitly aim to develop these competences. Given these findings, this article questions how to teach the French cultural dimension and what resources could be made available to FLE teachers. The underlying hypothesis is that these resources will help preserve the cultural aspect of language teaching, thereby preventing it from being deprived of its essential cultural content that complements it. Consequently, they will enable learners to communicate correctly in FLE. Ultimately, this study raises the question of how to manage the intercultural aspect that emerges from the encounter between the local culture of learners and the foreign culture in the FLE classroom, drawing on research conducted in the didactics of languages and cultures. In this perspective, our study is divided into two parts: the first part highlights the main incompatibilities and contradictions we have just mentioned, while the second part proposes some didactic approaches aimed at mitigating these problems.