Profiling the Intercultural Communicative Competence of university students at the beginning of their Erasmus placements

Drawing on seminal notions of culture to help diagnose and evaluate intercultural training (Byram 1997), this paper reports on the preliminary results of a research project seeking to explore key elements of the intercultural dimension during Erasmus placements. Preliminary data from a questionnaire distributed to students from Nottingham Trent University (UK) and Salamanca University (Spain) show that, in spite of their differences, both groups display positive attitudes towards the host country at the beginning of their placements, even if the eradication of deeply ingrained prejudices still pose the main educational challenge for the students and their home and host institutions. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.