A Teaching Proposal for Intercultural Communicative Competence

Abstract

Since Canale and Swain’s (1980) model of Communicative Competence, during the last decades the construct has evolved in a much more complex idea where culture plays the main role. Although it has been defined in several ways, this new concept is commonly known as Intercultural Communicative Competence. Authors such has Byram (1997), Kim (2001), and Fantini (2005) have proposed their models of ICC, which have in common the importance of acting appropriately and effectively in a specific culture, as well as being aware of the difficulties that facing a new culture may imply. Thanks to these authors, culture is increasingly becoming more relevant in the foreign language class, thus, making linguists and teachers reflect on the best way to implement the culture element in the syllabus. Therefore, we propose a teaching unit that aims at fostering interculturality and developing students’ ICC. This proposal has been implemented in a 2nd year class of primary school, and at the end students have accomplished a questionnaire that we designed. Results show that they felt enthusiastic while learning about their peers’ cultural habits and sharing their own. Therefore, we suggest that further research on how to include culture in the FL class should be conducted.