Applied English Linguistics (Kurt Kohn)

Teenagers in Europe encounter culturally and linguistically diverse societies, both in face to face contact and in web communication. This is a challenge and chance for which school can prepare them: to increase intercultural competence while at the same time acquiring foreign language skills needed for successful and appropriate intercultural communication.

icEurope – ‘Intercultural Communication in Europe’ – sets out to gain insights into foreign language and culture learning within a web-enhanced English classroom. Intercultural communication (IC), foreign language learning (FLL) and elearning are combined to develop intercultural foreign language competence in authentic elearning environments.

icEurope focuses on enabling learners to use their English as a lingua franca (ELF) for negotiating cultural concepts in intercultural contact situations. Pupils become aware of the dynamic relationships between language and culture and learn to use their own English for understanding and expressing lingua-cultural concepts.

Contact is established by web collaboration via Moodle between teenagers from Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy and Turkey. The approach is based on a constructivist and socio-cultural view of content and language integrated learning (CLIL); it encourages interactive and integrated practice in classrooms and beyond. A model of language and culture learning and learning scenarios highlights how collaborative interaction in intercultural online activities fosters intercultural foreign language skills. icEurope also aims at increasing digital media skills for the purposes of intercultural language learning.

Results will be published to provide teachers and trainers with the theoretical, methodological and technological knowledge needed to use web technologies for teaching intercultural foreign language skills. The project aims at an increased awareness of the potentials of web media and will provide foreign language teachers, trainers and government bodies with guidelines and innovative teaching materials.

Teacher will also have the opportunity to use the icEurope platform in the future for their own web collaboration projects.

For more information, please see the project website at www.iceurope-project.eu