Innovation in Language Learning

Student mobility has increased significantly over the past decades, a study abroad experience is still perceived as valuable and important for a future successful career. The phrase ‘global competence’ has become popular, even if there is a lack of consensual definition on the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and experiences required for such a competence. Other key concepts have been thoroughly investigated, such as Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC), Intercultural Dialogue, Intercultural Citizenship, and Education for Democratic Culture. Undoubtedly foreign language learning plays an important role in this arena and is identified as a component of all of these constructs. This paper presents a research project on the impact of targeted educational activities on the development of the ICC of college students with international mobility grants, the activities are integrated in an Italian L2 course, level B1/B2. The acquisition of intercultural communication skills goes through three stages: "awareness, knowledge and skills, for this research project activities aimed at developing the first two steps, awareness and knowledge, were designed. Living in a different country and culture allows the students with international mobility grants to put into practice what was theoretically addressed in the L2 class in order to develop their skills, which is the third element of the sequence. The purpose of the teaching activities is therefore to encourage the creation of a process rather than obtaining a standard result identical for all learners. The experimental group worked to: Develop awareness; Develop the ability to separate observation from its interpretation; Learn to observe cultures objectively. Finally, the test results are presented, based on a sample of 58 respondents. The data show a rather low ICC upon entry for the entire sample. At the end of the course the experimental group showed significant changes on the components of the ICC measured with the INCA Portfolio if compared to the control group. The research results confirm that ICC is not acquired automatically, it needs to be learned and practised. The potential and limitations of the research project are also presented.  

Keywords: Intercultural communicative competence, Intercultural competence, Study abroad, Italian L2, Foreign language learning, Intercultural competence assessment