Developing Intercultural Competences by Means of a Technology-Mediated Learning Model
Developing Intercultural Competences by Means of a Technology-Mediated Learning Model

Summary/Abstract: Within technical universities, the language courses role is to teach both linguistic competences, as well as transversal competences, such as the intercultural competences, the discursive competences put in place in the professional communication and textual competences. Similarly, the institutional education context meant for the future engineers is more open to the integration of technologies. The technology-mediated learning model (Guichon) combines two types of thinking patterns, that of the means provided by technologies, and the one of didactic objectives, and it permits to build the training direction by taking into account the psychosocial factors. Our aim in this study is to present a technology-mediated learning model meant to develop the intercultural competences of the future engineers, but equally their discursive and textual competences. Several premises underlie our endeavour; firstly, the fact that the language is an assembly of procedures that express and transmit meanings, secondly, these meanings are built and decoded by the interlocutors according to the cultural grids specific to the collectivity, thirdly, a public having developed technical knowledge permits a better valorization of the psychoaffective aspects of education, and, finally, the current instrumentation for the acquisition of the language that essentially represents an instrument of transaction among individuals allows them to act as social actors. The present study will present the model for the creation and exploitation of authentic documents, the competences driven, the new roles of the actors: teacher ~ learner mediator, due to their technological competences, as well as the activities carried out. It will demonstrate how technologies can be dynamically integrated within a language course in order to teach specific competences.

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