La competencia comunicativa intercultural (CCI) como herramienta para la adaptación al EEES

Resumen

The EHEA fosters the training of critical citizens by means of questioning, exploration, comparison, analysis and reflection by using student-centred higher education methods. The concept of ICC comes both from cross-cultural psychology, through intercultural competence, and linguistics, through communicative competence. By means of five savoirs (related to attitudes and values; knowledge; interpretations and relation skills; discovering skills and critical cultural awareness) established by Byram (1977) all these aspects are encouraged. The intercultural speaker is a learner who is always in the process of learning. At the same time, the teacher becomes a mediator who gives priority not to the amount of knowledge acquired but to the development of new attitudes, skills and critical awareness in the student. Although the concept of ICC has focussed mostly on the teaching and learning of foreign languages, its application is much wider and it may be extended to any other discipline in higher education, especially, taking into account its international scope. Thus, ICC can be a good tool for adaptation to the EHEA.