"Learning from one another" eTwinning project: a model of an intercultural approach to using ICT in foreign language teaching

Learning a foreign language (FL) entails more than attaining the mastery of a system of linguistic norms or the functional and pragmatic aspects of that language. It requires learning to adapt to different cultural norms. So, the challenge is to provide FL learners with opportunities to interact with people from other cultural and linguistic realities and re-focus the aims of FL learning to the development of intercultural communicative competence (ICC). The introduction of information and communication technology (ICT) in education not only enhances the access to information but also enables intercultural contact among individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds, setting the conditions for the development of curriculum-based telecollaboration projects. The LOA eTwinning project presented in this chapter was implemented in the context of an action-research project aimed to introduce an intercultural approach to teaching English to raise pupils' motivation and challenge them to become more creative, more collaborative, and more autonomous.