Proceedings of the 34th International Academic Conference, Florence

FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING AS AN INTERCULTURAL COACHING: A SELF-DEVELOPMENTAL TOOL FOR HIGH LEVEL INTERCULTURAL INTELLIGENCE

RENY RADKOVA

Abstract:

The goal of this paper is to bring some insights and practical information to the intercultural and foreign teaching community on how coaching foreign language is a perfect combination of intercultural and linguistics training. The purpose of the scientific study is to examine this process in detail and to form a cultural understanding with mutual tolerance towards otherness, as well as to present a comparative study of both cultures in a specific cultural context. The progress of scientific research on the topic that helps analyze intercultural communicative competence and applied linguistics training is vital to understanding and developing an intercultural approach. It should accompany not only contemporary foreign language training, but also comprehensive training due to migration, emigration, and globalization processes. Teaching and obtaining cross-cultural awareness provides a journey of increasing self-knowledge as the first step to being open to further knowledge and understanding of others. Both intercultural trainers and foreign language teachers should have to be multilingual and very well prepared linguists. They should have been working or studied both in the field of Psychology and Intercultural Communication. The study focuses on the problems and opportunities for training in intercultural communication. The study was conducted among Bulgarian and American Fulbright community, part of it investigating multicultural classrooms and university auditoriums and extracurricular activities. The intercultural context in which foreign language learning takes place is an aspect through which both children, students and adults find themselves able to acquire a sense of their own and of different cultures, to communicate in the new situation, and to create a suitable "new" cultural environment by coming in contact with another culture. The presented survey related to Fulbright students and teachers aims to help with English language teaching by analyzing the process itself. The future belongs to multicultural organizations and societies. The way traditional organizations are structured hierarchically is no longer adequate for the challenges that the globalised economical society with its increasing pace places. Multicultural leaderships and teams, situational and contextual decision making by them as members of the multicultural community and consistent innovation developing through qualified peer-feedback are going to be key to a successful world economy in the upcoming decades.

Keywords: cross-cultural awareness, intercultural trainers, foreign language teachers

DOI: 10.20472/IAC.2017.034.044

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