Interculturalism in the efl classroom: the challenges behind implementing intercultural communicative competence (icc)

Martín Gracia, Izarbe
Tarancón de Francisco, Juan Antonio (dir.)

Universidad de Zaragoza, FEDU, 2018
Departamento de Filología Inglesa y Alemana, Área de Filología Inglesa

Máster Universitario en Profesorado de Educación Secundaria Obligatoria, Bachillerato, Formación Profesional y Enseñanza de Idiomas, Artísticas y Deportivas

Resumen: In 1997, Michael Byram published his theory adding the intercultural competence to the communicative approach to foreign language teaching as a means to include all the sociocultural aspects that are needed to fully comprehend a message. And, nowadays, educators are paying special attention to Intercultural Communicative Competence as a means to integrate culture and language in the classroom. Through an analysis of the communicative approach and European and Spanish framework to foreign language teaching, it is stated the benefits of intertwining culture-related activities and language for practicing effective communicative acts. Besides, it is explained the shift from an informative to a formative approach to culture in order to set the context to which Byram’s proposal was addressing with his innovative theory. After introducing the two approaches and highlighting the importance of making this transition towards a formative approach, the dissertation centers on explaining the challenges a FL teacher might find when doing this shift in the teaching-learning process. These challenges concern mainly to the FL material used as a guide for the content of FL classroom and to the lack of culture-related training of FL teachers, which is better illustrated thanks to the first-hand experience in placement period.

Tipo de Trabajo Académico: Trabajo Fin de Master