Integrating intercultural and communicative objectives in the foreign language class: A proposal for the integration of two models

Language teaching, after the 'intercultural turn' of the 1990s which more recently made it possible to speak of Foreign Language Education or Intercultural Foreign Language Education (IFLE), proposes broadening the aims of language education to include among its main concerns students' intercultural competence (IC), personal growth, and intercultural critical citizenship. This educational broadening of language-teaching horizons raises delicate and controversial issues, first of all concerning the relationship intercultural objectives have with communicative objectives at both curriculum and methodology levels. This issue, crucial since teaching a foreign language is clearly a priority for IFLE, is addressed in the present article through a proposal to integrate two models: the Methodological Model of Intercultural Competence (MetMIC) (Borghetti 2011), and the Teaching Unit Model (TUM) (Freddi 1975, 1994; Porcelli 1994; Zorzi 1995; Balboni 2002). These two frameworks, each within its own area of application (intercultural education in the case of MetMIC and foreign language teaching in the case of TUM) are focussed on curriculum planning and put forward methodological suggestions for teachers. Their integration, as suggested in this article, can be carried out on three levels (general and educational, ‘macro’ or curricular, and ‘micro’ or methodological) and allows for coherently pursuing intercultural and communicative objectives through theoretically-informed methodological choices about curriculum structure and teaching methodologies.