Intercultural Learning in the Language Classroom

Intercultural learning in the language classroom means helping learners understand other perspectives, reflect on their own and communicate appropriately in situations where different expectations meet. The goal is usually described as intercultural communicative competence. It is less about knowing facts on a country than about curiosity, the ability to interpret unfamiliar behaviour and texts, and awareness of how one’s own background shapes judgements.

From “culture facts” to competence

Older coursebooks often treated culture as a set of facts: national dishes, festivals, landmarks. This has value, but it tends to present countries as uniform and can reinforce clichés. Current approaches focus on competences that learners can transfer to new situations.

A widely cited model, developed by the language education researcher Michael Byram in the 1990s, describes intercultural competence as a combination of several dimensions. In simplified form:

Dimension	What it means	Classroom question
Attitudes	Curiosity, openness, willingness to suspend judgement	“What would you like to find out about this?”
Knowledge	About social groups, practices and how interaction works	“What do we know, and where does that knowledge come from?”
Interpreting and relating	Explaining a document or event from another perspective and relating it to one’s own	“How might someone from there read this text?”
Discovery and interaction	Acquiring new knowledge and using it in real-time communication	“What could you ask to find out more?”
Critical cultural awareness	Evaluating practices and products, including one’s own, on the basis of explicit criteria	“By which standards are we judging this?”

The Council of Europe’s action-oriented approach also includes plurilingual and pluricultural competence, which values all the languages and cultural experiences learners bring.

Practical formats

1. Comparing everyday texts

Menus, school timetables, weather reports, job ads, supermarket flyers and social media posts reveal everyday practices. Learners compare two versions (one from their own context, one from a target-language context) and note differences and similarities, then discuss possible reasons. Our guide to authentic web resources shows how to find and adapt such texts.

2. Critical incidents

A critical incident is a short story of a misunderstanding in an intercultural encounter. Example (made up for illustration):

A student on an exchange is invited to dinner at 7 pm. She arrives at exactly 7 and finds the host still in the shower. The host seems slightly embarrassed. The student feels unwelcome.

Learners discuss: What might each person have expected? What other explanations are possible? What could each person say to clarify the situation? The point is not to find the “correct” cultural rule, but to practise generating multiple interpretations.

3. Working with stereotypes

Collect associations about a country or group anonymously (for example on a shared board), then analyse them: Where do these images come from? Which are generalisations, which are prejudices? What evidence contradicts them? Follow up with texts or videos in which people from that context speak for themselves. Our guide to video and podcasts offers ideas for choosing suitable material.

4. Virtual exchange

Partner classes in another country can exchange messages, short videos or collaborative projects. This gives learners a real audience and real questions. Prepare learners for misunderstandings and plan reflection after each exchange round. Data protection rules of your school apply to any platform used.

5. Role plays with perspective change

Learners act out a situation twice, swapping roles, and then reflect on how it felt from each side. This works well within speaking activities and needs only a short debrief to become intercultural learning.

A 15-minute intercultural moment in a normal lesson

1. Text (5 min): a short authentic item, for example a train announcement or a menu.
2. Perspective question (5 min): “What would surprise a visitor from our country here? What might surprise a visitor about ours?”
3. Reflection (5 min): each learner writes one sentence: “I noticed that … Perhaps this is because …”

Repeated regularly, these short moments build competence without needing separate “culture lessons”.

Pitfalls

• One country, one culture. Avoid presenting a target-language country as homogeneous. Regional, social and individual differences matter.
• Spokesperson role. Do not ask a learner to explain “their culture” on behalf of everyone.
• Moralising. The aim is understanding and reflection, not telling learners what to think.
• Only tourism topics. Include work, school, media and everyday conflict, not only food and festivals.

Assessment and reflection

Intercultural competence is best supported through formative tools: learning journals, portfolio entries and short written reflections. Language portfolios often include sections for intercultural experiences, which can be a good starting point. Grade the ability to describe, compare and explain, not personal attitudes.

More methods for meaning-focused language teaching are collected in the methods section.