Perspectives on Intercultural Aspects in Foreign Language Teaching andLearning

Discussing the concept of intercultural communicative competence in a foreign language opens up the awareness of the existence of aspects of learning of other cultures that go beyond formal knowledge of the way the language is spoken and written. The key to working towards a prejudice-free classroom is to focus on teaching and learning in a classroom environment that can support students to learn outside their own culture in order to place themselves within a multicultural perspective. Intercultural competences are abilities to explore complex environments marked by a growing diversity of peoples, cultures and lifestyles and to perform “effectively and appropriately when interacting with others who are linguistically and culturally different from oneself” (Fantini & Tirmizi, 2006). According to the UNESCO document Guidelines on Intercultural Education (2006) schools are a central place to nurture such skills and abilities; furthermore, students should be provided with extensive opportunities to engage in intercultural interactions while learning English in the classroom. The aim of the paper is to establish a general framework of what intercultural communicative competence represents and to illustrate how this concept may be dealt with effectively in a foreign language teaching and learning context by discussing a selection of intercultural language activities.