Paru le 03/06/2003 | Broché 100 pages
Etudiants
édition Centre européen pour les langues vivantes
Successful communication presupposes a good degree of social understanding and sharing of meaning and therefore participating in a community's life via another language necessitates not only an acceptable level of proficiency in that language, but also an extended behavioural code.
What kind of cultural set-backs do language learners face when visiting the target country, or even in interacting with native speakers of a language? What can we learn from the experience of such learners?
The aim of this project was to tap into the experiences of seasoned foreign language learners and travellers for the collection of a database of anecdotes that symbolise the kind of intercultural failure faced by newcomers to a target culture.
The database was launched on the ECML website in 2001 and a number of ECML workshop participants were invited to contribute anecdotes. In this publication the data collected is described and is used as an illustration for possible classroom activities.
The Council of Europe has forty-four member states, covering virtually the entire continent of Europe. It seeks to develop common democratic and legal principles based on the European Convention on Human Rights and other reference texts on the protection of individuals. Ever since it was founded in 1949, in the aftermath of the second world war, the Council of Europe has symbolised reconciliation.