’Cultural’ and ’Intercultural’ in Teaching Foreign Languages in a Technical University

Abstract

Abstract Our article presents a series of concepts connected to competence-based education and teaching intercultural competence with a view to highlighting several important characteristics of competence, such as: it is contextual; it involves a life-learning process; it is an ideal set of knowledge, skills and attitudes which must be learned. Referring to the field of foreign languages, the components of the communicative competence have acquired new dimensions, among which the most debatable is the cultural element. We shall present an interesting terminology associated with the cultural competences in the history of teaching French, with a view to identifying the most recent denominations and definitions of various cultural competences. The article also consists in presenting the findings of a research which aimed to identify the perceptions of foreign language teachers on the most relevant teaching objectives, methods and content related to intercultural competence. Data were collected based on a series of interviews and a questionnaire addressed to university professors who teach foreign languages. The findings show a tendency to practice listening comprehension and spoken production, from an intercultural perspective, as it suits the students’ need to acquire oral communication skills for working in multicultural professional environments.

Keywords

• cultural
• intercultural
• teaching
• competence
• communication