Possibilities and limits of the autobiography of intercultural encounters in the foreign language classrooms from the French language teachers’ perspective
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15291/ai.1280Keywords:
autobiography of intercultural encounters, French language teachers, intercultural competence, teaching toolAbstract
Despite numerous positive outcomes of the intercultural approach in the second language teaching,both for the individuals and the society as a whole, its realization in the foreign language classesseems to be limited by different kinds of obstacles. Some of them are the limited school workingconditions and the lack of the foreign language teachers’ competence to teach according to themain intercultural principles. The Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters is an educationaltool created in 2009. by the Council of Europe which seems to be a completely valid teachingmaterial to use in Croatian foreign language classrooms with the concept which provides thepossibility to overcome some of the above mentioned obstacles. In order to determine the wayteachers perceive the Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters, this small scale descriptiveresearch has been conducted among 27 French language teachers working in the Croatianprimary schools. The results show that the participants have recognized the possibilities of thematerial as well as its main limits which could prevent foreign language teachers to use it, likerestricted time, curriculum limitations, and poor school conditions. These results lead us to thefollowing conclusion: in order to introduce the Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters in theCroatian foreign language classrooms, foreign language curriculums should be modified in theway that better intercultural education should be provided for all the foreign language teachers,the teachers’ working conditions should generally be improved and more supportive and finallyforeign language curriculum should be modified.
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