Pages: 64

Part I covers the theoretical concepts at the heart of the book, culture and intercultural competence, situating them within contemporary phenomena such as multiculturalism and globalisation. It looks at methodologies for evaluating language learning materials with regard to their potential for fostering intercultural competence and analyses whether – and how successfully - these concepts underpin the materials that we currently use in the language classroom. It conceives of culture, the language classroom, and intercultural learning as complex dynamic systems (CDS) and concludes with a framework for the development of intercultural materials which is applied in the intercultural activities proposed in Part II.

Pages: 94

Part II operationalises the materials development framework offered in Part I. It consists of four sets of activities. Sets (A) and (B) offer intercultural awareness-raising activities for teachers/practitioners and for learners respectively. The activities in Set (C) are aimed at teachers/practitioners, proposing ideas, tasks and principles for developing intercultural materials for use in the classroom. Set (D), finally, offers methods for teachers to adapt their language learning coursebook to extract greater intercultural learning content.

Pages: 44

Part III proposes how intercultural activities offered in Part II can be included in the curriculum in different contexts. In doing this, we draw on the experiences and examples of intercultural competence teaching in international situations. This is complemented with practical examples from the field of language teaching. These describe widely varying degrees of institutional support for the teaching of intercultural competence skills in terms of materials and how these materials are integrated into the curriculum, and vignettes from an international research study carried out by the authors (2020–2021) serve to showcase innovative and creative pedagogical practice ‘on the ground’.

Pages: 38

Part IV explores some avenues for practitioner research into intercultural competence materials that have sprung from the rest of the book, together with proposed projects. These are underpinned, at the start, by a synthesis of methodologies for such research. Suggested new directions for research into intercultural competence materials are hitherto under-researched areas: (1) exploring how language teaching materials are currently used (‘materials in use’) (2) a focus on cultural sensibilities (3) looking at intercultural skills teaching through a critical pedagogy lens (4) investigating student-developed materials and (5) the conundrum of assessing intercultural competence.

Pages: 4

The conclusion to Developing Intercultural Language Learning Materials summarises each of the four parts of the book, charting its theory to practice structure. It reiterates the core premise of the book, that intercultural competence has a global reach, transcending language proficiency and seeking enhanced understanding and communication between and among cultures. The conclusion thus anticipates that its readership may include not only practitioners, researchers and academics in the fields of language and cultural studies but those in other associated disciplines and contexts.