Preparing an Intercultural Curriculum for University Studies Abroad

Résumé En

The "Intercultural Speaker" could be defined as an intermediary between his or her own culture and the other's culture. Intercultural competence is a skill to be acquired, a nd significant elements in this process have been isolated during the course of a three-year action-research project with students learning English as part of their business studies degree at Mulhouse University in France. The results obtained will be used to design a specific program to prepare Erasmus students for a stay in another European university to obtain a master's degree in disciplines other than English. The objective is to provide students with training in English as well as as the opportunity to think carefully about the intercultural aspects of this specific experience. This curriculum is designed to improve their linguistic and cultural adaptation, helping them to reach greater intercultural awareness and thus to become real "intercultural speakers". This presentation outlines the structure of this program and reports on the results already obtained with a similar student population who worked in a foreign company for six months. In a second phase, this program will feed into further action-research with the follow-up of the students to offer training which meets their needs as closely as possible for their discovery of a foreign culture and their adaptation to a different university system. IIn this context, we will emphasize the link between language and culture.