1,721,013 research outputs found
Is there really a need for assessing intercultural competence? Some ethical issues
Full text linkAssessing intercultural competence (IC) is one of the hot-button issues within intercultural language education research today. Even if there are “more questions than answers” (Sercu, 2010) about this matter, it is generally accepted that assessing IC is somehow possible and necessary. This conceptual paper shifts from possibility to ethics, and discusses some reasons why assessing IC may not be considered opportune from an ethical perspective. Moreover, it casts doubt on whether assessing IC is truly necessary in language education. The paper presents four issues which appear problematic: The weaknesses of the existing models of IC with respect to assessment; the relationship between IC and interculturally competent performance; the context-based and relational nature of IC; the affective dimension of IC
La città italiana tra luogo, rappresentazione e parola. Una proposta operativa per l’integrazione di educazione linguistica e interculturale nella classe di lingua italiana
Full text linkL’articolo propone agli insegnanti di lingua italiana per stranieri un’attività didattica che, incentrata sul tema della città e fondata su un approccio di tipo interculturale, mira a sviluppare la competenza comunicativa in lingua italiana degli studenti attraverso una più ampia azione di educazione interculturale. Dopo aver presentato i principi della Foreign Language Education cui s’ispira (§ 1), l’articolo ripercorre la fasi dell’attività con lo scopo di guidare gli insegnanti nella realizzazione del percorso educativo suggerito (§ 2) o, grazie ai puntuali rimandi teorici e all’esperienza diretta di chi scrive, nell’ideazione di nuove attività parimenti ispirate all’approccio interculturale (§ 3). La proposta operativa è stata testata con due diverse classi di livello principiante-intermedio (A2-B1) presso il Department of Italian della National University of Ireland, Galway, ma è anche facilmente adattabile a livelli superiori
Intercultural education in practice: Two pedagogical experiences with mobile students
Full text linkIl presente articolo, di stampo pedagogico e operativo, descrive e commenta un’attività di educazione interculturale per studenti Erasmus sviluppata nel contesto del progetto europeo IEREST (http://ierest-project.eu/). L’attività “24 h Erasmus Life” mira a far riflettere gli studenti sul quattro aree tematiche: i possibili risvolti emotivi del percorso di mobilità, le differenze comunicative che caratterizzano ambienti accademici differenti, la dimensione sociale dell’esperienza all’estero, e i risvolti identitari dell’uso linguistico. Nell’autunno 2014, l’attività “24 h Erasmus Life” è stata sperimentata da alcuni insegnanti dell’Università di Bologna con due gruppi di studenti: il gruppo A, composto da 18 studenti internazionali, ha seguito l’attività in aula tramite lezioni faccia-a-faccia. Il gruppo B era formato da 23 studenti dell’Università di Bologna che, al momento dello svolgimento dell’attività, si trovavano in Erasmus; per questa ragione il gruppo B ha partecipato all’attività in modalità a distanza, tramite un Learning Management System. Il presente articolo ripercorre le fasi in cui si articola l’attività , si sofferma sulle esperienze degli studenti, e commenta alcuni estratti tratti dalle trascrizioni delle lezioni (gruppo A) e alcuni esempi tratti dai blog e dai forum dell’attività online (gruppo B). In generale, l’articolo intende mostrare come si è svolto l’insegnamento nei due casi considerati.This pedagogical paper describes and discusses a teaching activity of intercultural education for mobile students developed within the European IEREST project (http://ierest-project.eu/). The activity is titled “24h Erasmus Life” and aims at making students reflect on four interrelated areas of their sojourn: the emotional impact of living abroad, the understanding of how communication works within a different academic community, the broader social dimension of the experiences, and the identity-related language issues. In Autumn 2014, the activity was tested with two different groups of students by teachers at the University of Bologna (UNIBO): the first group (A) was formed by 18 international incoming students and was taught by face-to-face teaching in Bologna; the second group (B) comprised 23 UNIBO students who were doing their study abroad in a variety of European countries, and participated in the activity by means of a Learning Management System. This paper traces the main instructional phases of “24h Erasmus Life”, and comments on the students’ learning experiences by reporting extracts from transcribed peer-to-peer class interactions (group A) and from class blog and forums (group B). Overall, the paper aims to describe how the teaching took place in the two cases considered
IEREST dissemination report
No full textIn this document, we have summarised the actions undertaken by the IEREST consortium to disseminate the project objectives, processes, results, outcomes, etc. We have tried to be as precise as possible in reporting dates, places, number of recipients, and possible outcomes; when viable, we have also included external links to additional information. What the reader will not find in this report is the almost continuous exchange of emails within and without the consortium in order to promote events, publications, pilotings, as well as to answer questions asked by potential ally partners, students, colleagues, and the general public
Educazione linguistica interculturale: origini, modelli, sviluppi recenti
No full textPerché e come si parla di educazione interculturale nella didattica delle lingue? Il volume offre una risposta a questa domanda, presentando le nozioni di base e i principali modelli teorici dell’educazione linguistica interculturale, il settore della glottodidattica che si occupa delle finalità educative dell’apprendimento e dell’insegnamento delle lingue. Come è proprio degli ambiti di studio ‘giovani’, questa area di indagine ha attraversato e attraversa tuttora turbolenze di tipo teorico e metodologico. Il libro storicizza il vivace dibattito internazionale al riguardo e offre un’agile panoramica dei fattori e delle posizioni che lo animano.
Il volume si articola in tre parti. La Parte I presenta le origini dell’educazione linguistica interculturale e ne discute le nozioni di base. La Parte II passa in rassegna alcuni modelli teorici che hanno descritto e cercato di spiegare come si realizzano apprendimento e insegnamento interculturali. Infine, nella parte finale (Parte III), il volume si concentra su uno dei possibili sviluppi dell’educazione linguistica interculturale, vale a dire sul ruolo della dimensione identitaria nell’apprendimento e nell’insegnamento delle lingue in prospettiva interculturale
Quale (e quanta) cultura? Riflessioni sull’educazione linguistica interculturale
Full text linkThe article offers some reflections on the so-called ‘intercultural perspective to the teaching of modern languages’ or ‘intercultural linguistic education’.It focuses in particular on a relatively recent development of the discipline, linked to the attempt to adopt a non-essentialist definition of ‘culture’ in glottodidactics.Unlike the well-known culturalist paradigm, the non-essentialist one challenges the idea that it is appropriate to set up the development of intercultural competence by leveraging only the international dimension of diversity.Non-essentialist principles are currently on the margins of intercultural linguistic education; but they are an opportunity to question some of the assumptions on which much of the theoretical reflection and didactic practice dedicated to the intercultural aims of learning and teaching languages are based
Integrating intercultural and communicative objectives in the foreign language class: A proposal for the integration of two models
No full textLanguage teaching, after the 'intercultural turn' of the 1990s which more recently made it possible to speak of Foreign Language Education or Intercultural Foreign Language Education (IFLE), proposes broadening the aims of language education to include among its main concerns students' intercultural competence (IC), personal growth, and intercultural critical citizenship. This educational broadening of language-teaching horizons raises delicate and controversial issues, first of all concerning the relationship intercultural objectives have with communicative objectives at both curriculum and methodology levels. This issue, crucial since teaching a foreign language is clearly a priority for IFLE, is addressed in the present article through a proposal to integrate two models: the Methodological Model of Intercultural Competence (MetMIC) (Borghetti 2011), and the Teaching Unit Model (TUM) (Freddi 1975, 1994; Porcelli 1994; Zorzi 1995; Balboni 2002). These two frameworks, each within its own area of application (intercultural education in the case of MetMIC and foreign language teaching in the case of TUM) are focussed on curriculum planning and put forward methodological suggestions for teachers. Their integration, as suggested in this article, can be carried out on three levels (general and educational, ‘macro’ or curricular, and ‘micro’ or methodological) and allows for coherently pursuing intercultural and communicative objectives through theoretically-informed methodological choices about curriculum structure and teaching methodologies
How to teach it? Proposal for a Methodological Model of Intercultural Competence
No full textThe problem of how to promote the development of intercultural competence (IC) in a foreign language classroom is one of the more delicate aspects of the research relative to Foreign Language Education or, as I prefer to call it, Intercultural Foreign Language Education (IFLE). Such a problem is to be attributed in large part to the fact that, in the field of IFLE, implementing methodological choices means sinking into a theoretical terrain that, despite having been extensively studied since the beginning of the 1990’s, must still clarify itself in unambiguous and largely accepted key principles.
From the operative-didactic point of view – which I will adopt in this paper – the most urgent theoretical knot to untangle is the conceptualization of intercultural competence as a model, intending for model “a generative framework, i.e. a pattern or a structure which can include all possible occurrences, and is able to generate behavior” (Balboni, 2006: 6). In other words, a model that is both complete in identifying the components (and the relationship between the components) of IC and at the same time is easily translatable in didactic performance.
This paper will illustrate a proposal of a methodological model for intercultural competence focusing on two of its characteristics: being a model “of development” that conceptualizes the competence in its process of acquisition and/or of didactic promotion, and defines a set of intermediate stages; and putting each of these stages in relation with the educational goals, the didactic objectives to be pursued, and the most appropriate methodological principles for doing it.
I will briefly go over the research phases that contributed to the delineation of the model: an experimental didactic form conducted with students of Italian at the National University of Ireland, Galway; and the analysis of a number of models of “intercultural competence”
Considerations on dynamic assessment of intercultural competence
No full textAssessing intercultural communicative competence (ICC) is a complex issue, about which there are 'more questions than answers' (Sercu, 2004, 2010). Even if a consistent number of tools have been developed (for overviews: Fantini, 2009; Humphrey, 2007; Sinicrope et al., 2007), as well as scales and level descriptors (e.g. the INCA scales), and performance and reflective tasks (Byram, 2009; Holmes & O’Neill, 2010), main theoretical challenges still need to be addressed in relation to assessing ICC within intercultural language education.
In this talk I review some of these challenges, particularly focussing on both the unclear relation between intercultural competence and intercultural competent performance, and the inherently context-sensitive nature of ICC. In light of such conceptual matters, test formats and tasks presently in use are not theoretical grounded enough and alternative approaches to ICC assessment should be explored.
I thus argue in favour of employing forms of Dynamic Assessment within intercultural language education. Thanks to key concepts such as internal (self-regulatory) and external forms of mediation as well as transcendence (Poehner, 2007), a sociocultural approach to learning can help address the above-mentioned issues: In the first place, the influence on individuals’ behaviours of the interlocutor and the context of interaction (Dervin, 2010; Kramsch, 1993); in the second place, a sociocultural approach allows us to make inferences about changes in types of mediation which support individuals’ performance (Aliaafreh & Lantolf, 1994), thus their competence
Tutor interculturale di classe nel Progetto FA.RA.S: il potere di nominare le persone vs la possibilità di cambiare le cose
No full textRiflessione sul termine 'straniero' alla luce dell'esperienza didattica del Laboratorio 'Tutor di classe interculturale’ (Progetto F.A.R.A.S.)
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