Developing The Students' Intercultural Competence In The Foreign Language Classroom

Abstract

The following paper is an attempt to examine the way the foreign language culture is introduced in the language classroom and how it apprehended by students. The aim is to sensitize teachers of the importance of developing the student' intercultural competence. We have started by a theoretical aspect and conducted a field work where we have tried to shed light on the way culture is taught in the department of English University of Batna. We have realizedthat a lot of work needs to be done by teachers, not only to provide students with cultural information, but also to develop their intercultural competence. Teachers and students do not view culture and its importance the same way. The main conclusion we reached is that, given the crucial role of culture, its appropriate teaching imposes itself in order to help students identify similarities and points of difference between their own culture and the foreign language culture in order to understand the other and maintain the positive from both cultures.