INTERCULTURAL E-PORTFOLIO

Our aim is to analyze how cultural and intercultural competences may be made explicit in order to be taught, learned and assessed. Basing our work on the distinction (as suggested by Puren, 1998 or the European Framework) between cultural knowledge and intercultural skills, which are skills rather than passive knowledge, we will prepare a list of these knowledge and skills, organizing them in an on-line document called "Intercultural e-portfolio: self-fictions and Intercultural Encounters", the first version of which is now available at http://www.uam.es/elite/eportfolio_interculturel_francophone as part of the work of our research group ELITE1. The target audience for this portfolio are secondary school students of French as a second language. As other portfolios have done, we will present some recommendations for the portfolio's use as a teaching/learning tool as well as a tool for (self)-assessment. We will follow the Common European Framework guidelines (and complementary documents) regarding intercultural objectives, such as the ARI portfolio (Autobiographie de rencontres interculturelles), and authors like Byram (1994). The contents of this e-portfolio share a basic structure with other language-culture portfolios, including: biography, skills assessment, a dossier of materials (which includes knowledge of French and Francophone geography/language/literature/arts/way of life -savoir-, as well as intercultural encounters -savoir-faire- and cultural representations, stereotypes, representations of self and other -savoir-etre-).