Development of Intercultural Competences

The 26th of November, our UIUC mates were in holidays, so we had the pleasure to have a guest lecturer in class, Kaisa Hahl's. The seminar was about the development of intercultural competences. I would like to highlight that after reading her article I could clarify some ideas about what intercultural competences were. 

In general, I found this seminar really interesting since it was the first time that I could immerse myself in this topic. At the same time, I found it a little bit difficult sometimes because some ideas were new and abstract for me. Nevertheless, I would like to mention some key points that I learnt thanks to this class and I strongly believe that are really relevant for my future as a language teacher because nowadays there are normally several students from different linguistic backgrounds in schools.  

1. Teachers should not take for granted intercultural competences. They should plan when and how they will implement them in their lessons.

2. We can't think that multicultural and intercultural are the same. On the one hand, the first one only needs a group of people with different linguistic backgrounds. On the other hand, intercultural means that there is also an interaction inside the group.

3. The purpose of intercultural education is awaken the students' curiosity and interest in the importance of intercultural issues and make students consider their own prejudices, stereotypes, and behavior to deal with them in multicultural situations.

4. From my humble point of view, I assume that everyone has some prejudices or stereotypes in their minds. However, if we are teachers, we should avoid making explicits these prejudices and stereotypes to students.

Here you have two videos that I found in Youtube which criticize in a humorous way the prejudices that normally people have depending on citizen's background and culture. Enjoy it!

Moreover, to know more about intercultural competence click here (It's a fantastic article by Unesco!).