Abstract:

Our aim is to analyze how cultural and intercultural competences may be made explicit in order to be taught, learned and assessed. Basing our work on the distinction (as suggested by Puren, 1998 or the Common European Framework) between cultural knowledge and intercultural skills, which are skills rather than passive knowledge, we will prepare a list of these knowledge and skills, organizing them in an on-line document called “Intercultural e-portfolio: self-fictions and Intercultural Encounters”, the first version of which is now available at http://www.uam.es/elite/eportfolio_interculturel_francophone as part of the work of our research group ELITE*.
The target audience for this portfolio are secondary school students of French as a second language. As other portfolios have done, we will present some recommendations for the portfolio’s use as a teaching/learning tool as well as a tool for (self)-assessment.
We will follow the Common European Framework guidelines (and complementary documents) regarding intercultural objectives, such as the ARI portfolio (Autobiographie de rencontres interculturelles), and authors like Byram (1994). The contents of this e-portfolio share a basic structure with other language-culture portfolios, including: biography, skills assessment, a dossier of materials (which includes knowledge of French and Francophone geography/language/literature/arts/way of life - savoir –, as well as intercultural encounters –savoir-faire– and cultural representations, stereotypes, representations of self and other –savoir-être–).

References:

BYRAM, M., MORGAN; C. et alii (1994). Teaching-and-Learning Language-and-Culture, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 100.
CONSEJO DE EUROPA (2002). Marco común europeo de referencia para las lenguas, Madrid: Anaya/Instituto Cervantes/MECD. [MCER]
COUNCIL OF EUROPE, Autobiographie de rencontres interculturelles. http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/autobiogrweb_FR.asp [ARI]
DE CARLO, Maddalena (1998). L’interculturel. Clé International.
NIEMEIER, S. (2004). “Linguistic and Cultural Relativity Reconsidered for the Foreign Language Classroom”, ACHARD, M. & S. NIEMEIER. Cognitive linguistics, second language acquisition, and foreign language teaching, Berlin:Mouton de Gruyter: 95-118.
PUREN, Ch. (2008): «La didactique des langues/cultures entre la centration sur l’apprenant et l’éducation transculturelle» Conference at the international colloquium «Problématiques culturelles dans l’enseignement/apprentissage des langues-cultures, mondialisation et individualisation : approche interdisciplinaire» University of Tallinn (Estonia), 8-10 May 2008. [published at www.aplvlanguesmodernes.org, consulted January 31 2010]
SANZ ESPINAR, G., ALFARO, M & MANGADA, B. (2010, in press): “Lenguas y culturas en la formación bilingüe y plurilingüe: lugar para el contacto entre lenguas y los diálogos entre culturas”, First International Congress on Interculturality and Education. 1-21 March 2010, summary available in CD-ROM.

*This paper is presented within the framework of the project "Towards a transnational Europe: literature and language as spaces for intercultural encounter", granted by Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid in 2010 for the research group ELITE “Plurilingualism and Transnational European Literature” based in the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.

Keywords:

Interculturality, e-portfolio, cultural knowledge, intercultural skills, intercultural biography, intercultural encounter, intercultural skills assessment.