Resumen de Towards the Design of an Intercultural Syllabus

Ewa Maciejewska-Stępień Stępień

• In light of the radical changes our societies face due to internationalization, information society and advancements in knowledge, it has become crucial to promote the intercultural dimension in language pedagogy (cf. European Commission, 1995). This need has been clearly reflected in the European policy on language, culture and education (Council of Europe, 2001) as well as in the literature on applied linguistics (Byram, 1997; Byram & Fleming, 1998; Kramsch, 1998; Byram, Nichols, & Stevens, 2001; Sercu et al., 2005; Bandura, 2007). However, despite the growing need for promoting intercultural education, most language teaching materials for general purposes have not been designed to develop intercultural competence in FL learners (Komorowska, 2006). The PICTURE project, the evaluation of which is the focus of this chapter, intended to fill this gap by developing a FL course module on aspects of intercultural communication in Europe. The purpose of this chapter is twofold: (1) to summarize the process and results of the PICTURE project evaluation, and (2) to present recommendations for the design of an intercultural syllabus