Bilingualism and interculture: what are teachers doing? (Bilingüismo e intercultura: ¿qué están haciendo los docentes?)

Abstract

One of the main aims of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is to develop intercultural awareness and understanding among students. The objective of this study is to analyse whether CLIL primary education teachers implement the intercultural axis of CLIL in the strategies and resources they plan and use in their daily lessons, and which factors may influence this. An open-question questionnaire was used to carry out an in-depth analysis of the opinions of 59 CLIL primary education teachers working at schools in Córdoba (Spain). The results show that communicative and cooperative activities, along with those activities in which interaction is the focus, are those most frequently employed by CLIL teachers to enhance the intercultural axis. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) resources are those most frequently applied in order to promote intercultural awareness. Independent variables such as gender, subject taught, years of experience and the textbook used had a significant influence on how teachers plan and put their strategies and didactic resources into practice. The outcomes indicate the need to reinforce CLIL teacher training in this regard. RESUMEN

Developing intercultural communicative competence in French-medium content and language integrated learning courses through teacher scaffolding

“…For example, related studies show that CLIL students are more willing to interact with foreign speakers than their non-CLIL peers, and that their cross-cultural awareness has been reinforced (Roiha & Sommier, 2018;Yang, 2021). However, teachers express difficulties in promoting ICC in CLIL courses, especially when students have grammatical and lexical problems, as they struggle to present both cultural knowledge and linguistic forms to students at the same time (Méndez, 2013;Pérez-Gracia et al, 2020). Additionally, Pawan (2008) has analysed different types of CLIL November 2023 teacher scaffolding and found that cultural scaffolding only accounted for 6% of the studied scaffolds, which offers insufficient evidence for ICC development in CLIL courses.…”

Intercultural Communication Strategy of International Student Services Staff at Higher Education in Indonesia

“…Besides functioning as a directed interaction, the strategy also shows the tactical pattern of a communication process [20]. Moreover, the goals of Intercultural Communication are as follows: (1) understand cultural diversity that influence communication practices, (2) recognized interaction challenges, (3) overcome problems caused by cultural diversity, (4) raise verbal communication and nonverbal skills, and (5) empower effective communication [21].…”