Developing intercultural communication in the EFL primary education classroom: Internationalization through virtual team collaboration with eTwinning

According to the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), the intercultural competence is one of the aspects that must be developed as part of the communicative competence in a foreign language. Two groups of students in their 6th year of Primary Education work on a pollution project through English as the vehicular language. The experimental group works in collaboration with students from a school in Poland through the eTwinning tool. The control group performs the same tasks, but with working teams formed by students from the same classroom. After the project, both groups conducted a questionnaire about their awareness regarding intercultural communicative competence. Results reveal that the group that worked in collaboration with the international students developed their intercultural competence more than the other group. Collaboration with students from another country- which has been possible through eTwinning - seems to have contributed to the development of this competence. According to the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), the intercultural competence is one of the aspects that must be developed as part of the communicative competence in a foreign language. Two groups of students in their 6th year of Primary Education work on a pollution project through English as the vehicular language. The experimental group works in collaboration with students from a school in Poland through the eTwinning tool. The control group performs the same tasks, but with working teams formed by students from the same classroom. After the project, both groups conducted a questionnaire about their awareness regarding intercultural communicative competence. Results reveal that the group that worked in collaboration with the international students developed their intercultural competence more than the other group. Collaboration with students from another country- which has been possible through eTwinning - seems to have contributed to the development of this competence.