Distance learners of German and intercultural competence

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Distance learners of German andintercultural competenceUwe Baumann a & Monica Shelley aa The Open University , UKPublished online: 23 Jan 2007.

To cite this article: Uwe Baumann & Monica Shelley (2006) Distance learners of German andintercultural competence, Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, 21:3,191-204

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Open LearningVol. 21, No. 3, November 2006, pp. 191–204

ISSN 0268–0513 (print)/ISSN 1469–9958 (online)/06/030191–14© 2006 The Open UniversityDOI: 10.1080/02680510600953153

Distance learners of German and intercultural competenceUwe Baumann* and Monica ShelleyThe Open University, UKTaylor and Francis LtdCOPL_A_195226.sgm10.1080/02680510600953153Open Learning0268-0513 (print)/1469-9958 (online)Original Article2006The Open University213000000November [email protected]

The article describes a research project undertaken with advanced adult learners of German at adistance at The Open University, United Kingdom. Their gains in intercultural competencewere investigated by looking at how far the students met the prescribed learning outcomes, theirknowledge items, language skills, attitudes towards Germans and their assessment results. Thefindings show that this particular group of learners felt that they had achieved the differentrequirements of the stated learning outcomes to a surprisingly high level and demonstrated ahigh level of intercultural competence. In addition, these learners were able to articulate theiropinions of commonly held attitudes and stereotypical views about Germans and offeredreflective insights into why their personal attitudes differed in many respects from morecommonly held views.

Keywords: Distance language learning; Learning outcomes; Intercultural competence

Introduction

The article begins by providing brief background information about the Germanprogramme at The Open University, United Kingdom (OUUK) and the courseswithin it. It introduces the concept of learning outcomes and their function within theinstitutional context of the OUUK. The paper then outlines the concept of intercul-tural competence and its significance in foreign language teaching and learning,followed by a description of the research project and its outcomes. The findingsexamine the level of intercultural competence the students achieved by the analysis ofa variety of data. This included the learning outcomes that contained explicit refer-ences to intercultural competence, assessment data so as to establish any gains incompetence and an investigation of the retention of knowledge items to providefurther evidence, as will the answers to the questions on typical attitudes towards

*Corresponding author. Department of Languages, Faculty of Education and Language Studies,The Open University, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK. Email: [email protected]

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192 U. Baumann and M. Shelley

Germans. In addition, these results offer a comprehensive picture of the students’background, their motivation for studying and their perception of how far they metthe given learning outcomes overall.

Background

The German programme at the OUUK was developed in the mid-1990s with thelaunch of the first German distance language course in 1997. Since then more than10,000 students have embarked on German courses at the OUUK. In 2005 theGerman programme was made up of four courses at Levels 1–3, progressing from abinitio to the equivalent of a second-year/third-year undergraduate course. Since itsinception, the German programme has undergone several changes in response tointernal and external requirements.

Variationen top-up: a Level 3 German course at the OUUK

New OUUK regulations required a change to the levels of the language courses, sothis special top-up course was offered for one year (2003) to permit some groups oflearners to gain credits at the right level. The learners in question studied an advancedcourse of German, L303 Variationen top-up, over one academic year from Februaryto October. They were expected to spend up to 14 hours per week studying thecourse. Students had to submit six assignments throughout the academic year and satan end-of-course examination in October. As with all the OUUK language assign-ments, these were designed to test their language skills in an integrated way andconsisted of written essays and spoken presentations recorded on tape (see Shelley &Baumann, 2005). The final assignment consisted of a 3000-word essay in German,where the students chose one of three topics and had to produce a piece of work thatfollowed (German) academic conventions in terms of referencing. While the majorityof courses delivered by the OUUK are open access, in this particular instance thestudents who took this top-up course were obliged to have studied a previous courseas a prerequisite. So the common factor that defined this cohort was that they wereadvanced learners of German who had previous experience of studying German at adistance with the OUUK. The data for this study were collected at the end of theacademic year at a point when the students had completed their study and were bestable to reflect on their learning experiences.

Learning outcomes

Over the past few years, the specification of learning outcomes has become a standardfeature of university courses in the United Kingdom. Learning outcomes define theaims and objectives of a study programme that the students follow. They clarify whatstudents should know and be able to do when they finish a course of study. They arepublished and students have access to this information to enable them to make informedchoices before they decide to follow a certain study path. At the OUUK, a three-year

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Distance learners of German and intercultural competence 193

project to develop learning outcomes across all faculties was launched in 2001. Theproject’s aim was to ensure that the institution complied with the requirements of theUK Quality Assurance Agency.

The learning outcomes relevant for the students who studied the Variationen top-up course and who participated in this research project were those developedgenerically for higher level languages courses at the OUUK. These outcomes coveredeight areas and more than 30 statements. The first area was the use of the targetlanguage. The second covered the explicit knowledge of language, such as linguisticknowledge of structures and registers, and linguistic principles. Knowledge of aspectsof the cultures, communities and societies where the language is used was the thirdlearning outcome area. Intercultural awareness and understanding were covered inthe fourth prescribed learning outcome area: students had to show that they wereaware of the similarities and dissimilarities between aspects of their own culture(s)and those of the target language. A fifth outcome area was concerned with thelearners’ linguistic ability, breaking this down under the four language skills (reading,writing, listening and speaking). Learners were also required to demonstrate cognitiveskills, key skills and practical or professional skills. Cognitive skills were defined asthose related to the creative and accurate use of language. Key skills referred tocommunication, and the ability to recognise and use meta-communication strategies.Finally, practical or professional skills covered those skills that were transferable andpotentially marketable.

Intercultural competence

Intercultural awareness and competence is a concept that has evolved over the pastfew decades and become an area of research with major contributions from research-ers in the United Kingdom and elsewhere (see, among others, Byram, 1993, 1997;Kramsch, 1993, 1995, 1998; Bausch et al., 1997; Byram & Zarate, 1997; Byram &Tost Planet, 2001; Byram et al., 2001). When the Council of Europe developed itsframework for language learning for European citizenship, one of the aims for thelearners was to be able to communicate competently across cultures (Council ofEurope, 2001). Byram developed this concept as an expansion of communicativecompetence while maintaining ‘the link with recent traditions in foreign languageteaching’ (Byram, 1997, p. 3). Another author acknowledges that language profi-ciency on its own is not enough, but that language learning also requires ‘knowledgeof the ways culture and language interlock and an understanding of how interactionacross cultures operates’ (Jordan, 2002). In the same way, Kramsch argues that ‘if …language is seen as social practice, culture becomes the very core of language teach-ing’ (Kramsch, 1993, p. 8).

Byram advocated an approach that goes beyond the exchange of information andsuggests that an important aspect of intercultural communicative competence isknowledge (savoirs), both of oneself and the other:

The knowledge individuals bring to an interaction with someone from another country canbe described in two broad categories: knowledge about social groups and their cultures in

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one’s own country, and similar knowledge of the interlocutor’s country on the other hand.(Byram, 1997, p. 35)

These knowledge-based savoirs together:

constitute the frame of reference of the people living (in) a particular culture. Thewords and gestures which people use, the behaviours they display, the values theybelieve in, the symbols they cherish, etc., are always culture-bound and carry meaningwithin a particular cultural frame of reference. Therefore, in intercultural communica-tion it is important to always be sensitive to potential referential differences. (Sercu,2002, p. 63)

Two other important components of Byram’s framework are attitudes (savoir être),defined as ‘curiosity and openness, readiness to suspend disbelief about other culturesand belief about ones’ own’ (Byram, 1997, p. 50), and education (savoir s’engager),defined as having an ‘ability to evaluate, critically and on the basis of explicit criteria,perspectives, practices and products in one’s own and other cultures and countries’(Byram, 1997, p. 63).

Language-based skills are the final component of this framework (savoir apprendreand savoir comprendre). Savoir comprendre means the ‘ability to interpret a documentfrom one country for someone from another, or to identify relationships betweendocuments from different countries’ (Byram, 1997, p. 37), while savoir apprendre isregarded as the ‘skill of discovery’ or social interaction (Byram, 1997, p. 37). Tosummarise, Sercu described Byram’s framework as follows: ‘becoming an intercultur-ally competent user of a foreign language not only involves the acquisition of commu-nicative competence in that language, it also involves the acquisition of particularskills, attitudes, values, knowledge items and ways of looking upon the world’ (Sercu,2002, p. 63).

The research project

Aims and methodology

The project had three main aims:

● To find out how the students reacted to the learning outcomes and how they ratedthem.

● To establish how far—in the students’ perspective—these learning outcomes werebeing met by the course they had just completed.

● To assess whether the students gained in intercultural competence through thestudy of this course.

In addition, data were collected about the students and their personal experience oflearning German, and the students were offered the chance to reflect on how theirstudy might have influenced their attitudes towards Germany and the Germans.

The assessment of intercultural competence has been a subject of considerabledebate in the literature. But no one method of assessing intercultural competence hasbeen agreed, nor is there one that would be applicable in a variety of educational

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settings. When working out the innovative approach for the research projectdescribed in the following, what had to be taken into account was that these wereadult learners, that they were learning at a distance, that they came from a wide vari-ety of backgrounds and that they brought different experiences of language learningto their study of this course. The methodology employed for this project thus repre-sents a first attempt at such an assessment with this particular audience, and gaugingits effectiveness—or otherwise—formed an important part of the research. In whatways could these students’ intercultural competence gains best be assessed within theconstraints of this particular institutional setting?

The first, and simplest, approach was to look at students’ reactions to the learningoutcomes, since they contained explicit statements about intercultural competence.Second—and building on the framework developed by Byram and elaborated on bySercu—it can be argued that the skills of interpreting and relating (savoir comprendre)and discovery and interacting (savoir apprendre/faire) are demonstrable in an educa-tional setting on the basis of the students’ own work. Within the context of thiscourse, students should produce oral and written work where they have to interpretand to discover ‘documents’ from German-speaking cultures and demonstrate theirknowledge (savoirs) of aspects of these cultures. Third, to assess the knowledge items(Sercu, 2002, p. 63), it was decided to question students about a selection of thoseitems that were taught explicitly in the course so as to monitor the retention andpotential gain in knowledge items. These questions were grouped under the topics ofthe course, which ranged from German politics and history to literature and Germanywithin Europe.

Finally, attitudes towards others, and the potential for changing them, have longbeen recognised as an important aspect of intercultural competence. Althoughanswers to questions about attitudes are difficult to assess and may easily containstereotypes (Baumann & Shelley, 2003; Shelley & Baumann, 2005) it was decided toask the learners in this sample something about attitudes towards Germany and theGermans. For the purpose of this project, participants were asked to consider how atypical UK resident would describe a typical German and reflect on their ownattitudes as compared with those they considered to be ‘typical’.

The three sources of data for this project were:

● a specially designed questionnaire;● the continuous assessment records; and● demographic and background data drawn from a variety of sources.

The questionnaire contained questions about the students’ background, their experi-ence of learning German, their reasons for studying, the learning outcomes and howfar they felt they had achieved them, knowledge items gained and retained, and typi-cal attitudes towards German. To assess these attitudes, the students were offered 25adjectival antonyms that they rated on a bi-polar five-point scale. The questionnairewas distributed at the end of the period of study to the whole cohort of 128 students,of whom 52% returned the questionnaire (67 students). Their answers to the ques-tionnaire represented the students’ accumulated knowledge and opinions at the same

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point at the end of the course. The continuous assessment records covered students’work as they progressed through the course, so complemented the results of the ques-tionnaire. It was felt that, since the acquisition of intercultural competence is ofnecessity a cumulative process, this combined approach would provide most effectiveinsights within the parameters of this research project.

Findings

Student information

Comparisons with the whole cohort of students on this course are made for age,gender and assessment, to investigate how (a)typical these students were in relationto the whole cohort.

Age and gender

The sample of the learners taking part in this study ranged from 28 to 83 years, andthe average age was 54 years. This is higher than the overall cohort and higher thanin a normal course population in a German course at the OUUK. However, it isroughly in line with the findings of another research project, undertaken with acohort of students from a lower level OUUK German course (Baumann & Shelley,2003, p. 66). Comparing the sample with the overall cohort shows that significantlyfewer students between the ages of 30 and 49 participated in the study, while morestudents aged 50–59 and 65+ took part and sent back their filled-in questionnaires(see Figure 1).Figure 1. Age of students

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Why is there a difference in age between the cohort and the sample? It might bethat older students have got more time available than younger students, who, veryoften, have to juggle their study with family commitments and work.

Generally, language courses at the OUUK tend to have more female than malestudents. This was also the case with this course population: 61% of the overall cohortwas female and 39% was male. There was a slight difference in the distribution ofmale and female respondents in the sample compared with the overall student popu-lation—slightly more men and slightly fewer women took part in the project,compared with the number of men and women in the entire cohort (see Figure 2).Figure 2. Gender of students

Experience of learning German

Approximately 60% of the students surveyed had learned German at school, whilejust under 40% learned their German as adults. These learners had very diversequalifications in German—the most common were the OUUK Diploma in German,O-level (an award generally given at age 16 to school children in England, which isno longer available) and A-level (a qualification that permits university entry and isawarded after 12 years of schooling in England and Wales).

Virtually all the students had already studied German courses at both Level 1 andLevel 2 at the OUUK. So these students had a certain level of expertise and, indeed,seven students from this sample were originally nationals of Germany, Austria andSwitzerland. Just over one-half of the sample had lived in German-speaking countriesfor between four months and seven years in a large variety of locations. Seventy-threeper cent had travelled regularly to Austria, Germany or Switzerland, mostly betweentwo and three times per year. There was huge diversity in terms of the places theselearners had visited: Berlin featured very prominently, followed by Jena—where theGerman residential school takes place. About two-thirds had German-speaking

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friends or relatives and one-quarter of the students had business contacts in German-speaking countries.

Reasons for studying

The learners were asked why they chose to study with the OUUK. Their responsescan be grouped into two general areas: first, to gain more knowledge about theGerman language and German-speaking societies; and second, as a contributiontowards a qualification. The most popular response (84%) was that the learnerswanted to consolidate and extend their knowledge of and competence in the Germanlanguage. Also under this heading was the development of the learner’s awareness ofthe societies and culture(s) of contemporary Germany, which came third in popular-ity (63%), followed by the desire to develop and extend their analytical skills (51%).

The second most quoted reason was that the course contributed towards anOUUK degree (64%), followed by passing the revamped Diploma in German (51%)and gaining a degree in Modern Languages (39%). In addition, 46% felt particularlyattracted by distance learning and 36% by the good reputation of the institution.

General learning outcomes

The outcomes were looked at first by area, then those that were particularly relevantfor this study were examined in more detail. Overall, the learners surveyed felt thatthey had managed to achieve the prescribed learning outcomes to a very high degree.The results given below group ‘Completely achieved’ and ‘Fairly completelyachieved’ together. In some cases there is minor variation in the number of responses.Across the eight different areas the distribution is very balanced, with averages varyingbetween 82% for cognitive skills and 85% for practical or professional skills (seeFigure 3).Figure 3. Learning outcomes by area (%)The ratings for the individual learning outcomes within the areas ranged from 71%to 97%. The two highest figures were recorded in the area of practical and profes-sional skills. Ninety-seven per cent of the sample thought that they were able to workautonomously and use reference materials successfully. The next highest scores camefor the area of language skills and cognitive skills, where learners gave the specificlearning outcome of selecting and using appropriate reading strategies a rating of91%, the same number judged that they could organise and present ideas in a struc-tured way. Ninety per cent felt that they were able to select and exploit diverse targetlanguage materials for a variety of purposes.

The score for the area of explicit knowledge of the language was 83%; the learnersrated the individual learning outcomes that covered their ability to show a detailedunderstanding of the linguistic structures (87%) higher than their ability to show theirunderstanding of the linguistic principles (79%). With regard to language skills, it isperhaps not surprising that the receptive skills of reading and listening got a higherscore (88% and 85%, respectively) than the productive skills of writing (84%) andspeaking (75%).

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The three lowest scores were given to specific statements under professional/cogni-tive and key skills. Using communication tools, such as recordings or Information andCommunications Technology-based tools, was rated by 71% of the sample asachieved; contextualising from different perspectives followed with 73%, while three-quarters of the students felt that they carried out self-assessment strategies for moni-toring their own performance.

Intercultural competence

The findings in this section relate to the demonstration of the acquisition of intercul-tural competence in the two learning outcomes that are particularly relevant, in theresults of students’ continuous assessment, in improvement in knowledge items andin attitudinal awareness.

There were three areas of the learning outcomes that relate to intercultural compe-tence. As can be seen in Figure 3, students’ knowledge of aspects of the target cultureswas rated at 81%. They rated their acquisition of intercultural awareness at 82% andtheir explicit knowledge of the German language at 83%.

With regard to the savoirs described earlier, the assessment results show that thesample—as well as the overall cohort—gained good scores for all their assignments.There was no significant difference in the assessment results between the sample andthe entire cohort, although the former had slightly higher examination results and

Learning outcomes by area

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slightly lower results in the final assignment (see Figure 4). The learners participatingin the research project and the rest of the student population had all acquired thenecessary skills to gain good results in their spoken and written assignments, anddemonstrated the soundness of their knowledge of the areas tested in the assessment.Figure 4. Assessment resultsThe third area of research covered knowledge items. Analysing the results gave aslightly mixed picture. In particular, the learners’ recollection of important aspects ofrecent German history was not impressive. Knowledge about German politics wasretained reasonably well, but only one-half were able to identify all the main politicalparties in Germany. Other items showed a much higher retention, especially those todo with dialect and its role in German-speaking countries. The topic of migration intoand from Germany seemed to have caught the interest of the students, and informa-tion was remembered well. Items about Dresden and its architecture were recalledreasonably well—but East-German artists who featured in the course appeared tohave been, on the whole, forgotten; in contrast, some contemporary writers fromGerman-speaking countries were very well known to the students.

The learners were asked to rate typical attitudes of their fellow British country-women and countrymen towards Germans, using the scales provided. Theseadvanced learners of German judged that Germans were perceived by the general UKpublic, as—in descending order—efficient, formal, clean, hard-working, arrogant,thorough, serious, reliable, direct or blunt, environmentally friendly, prosperous,tidy, rigid or inflexible and rather humourless. The scales—polite through to rude,

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and friendly through to unfriendly—produced the most varied answers, with a largegroup of students being undecided and the rest spreading over the whole range.

Reflection

The participants in this study were invited to include open-ended comments and toreflect on their own attitudes towards Germans and other German speakers, compar-ing and contrasting their own attitudes with those they had described as the(stereo)typical viewpoint of the general British public.

Almost all the students in this study took advantage of this opportunity and oftenmade quite elaborate and insightful personal comments. A small selection of themwill be used to illustrate the key points the learners made.

As students of German who had engaged with the language and the cultures of thatcountry, they showed a more positive attitude towards Germans than what theyperceived to be normal attitudes towards Germans common among people living inthe United Kingdom:

Clearly as a student of German, I am perhaps more inclined to take a more positive viewof the German people than other British people.

Education, an important element of intercultural competence in the sense of savoirs’engager and the ability to compare and contrast one’s own cultures with the culturesof another country, shines through the comments of this student:

My attitude toward Germans is very different from the majority of my friends and acquain-tances who do not know the German language and culture. … Through my study ofGerman language and culture I have come to the conclusion that Germans are not unlikethe British in many ways. Democracy, church, family, welfare services are very importantto the German citizen.

Similarly, this student emphasises the understanding gained through studying German:

As a student of German I feel that I have a better understanding of the German characterand culture and am therefore less prone to generalisation or stereotypical attitudes. As witheverything in life, education is key, the more contact one has with different people, the betterthe understanding.

Another student stated that his stereotypical views of Germans had been challengedthrough engaging with the study of German:

I now understand that Germany consists of a very wide range of opinions and characteris-tics, much more like the British than I previously thought. My stereotypical views havebeen challenged!

This is reflected in the slightly more tentative comment another student made:

Having studied German and met many Germans, I think (hope) I have moved awayfrom some stereotypes. I still think that Germans are formal and inclined to like rulesto follow but I’m more aware that they are varied individuals. Tolerance is more wide-spread than I expected. Better knowledge and personal contact will always give adifferent picture.

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Other comments about the course(s) these students had studied at the OUUKincluded the following:

I feel I learned far more about Germany than about German as a language.

The course has given me an insight into German history, literature etc. It has given me aninterest in all things German.

One statement reflects on the still powerful hold the Second World War had, andin some cases still has, on attitudes towards Germans:

I was brought up not too long after the 2nd World War when, basically, we were supposedto think Germans were evil. When I first visited Germany as a teenager, attitudes werechanging and it was obvious from my own experience that Germans weren’t terribly differ-ent from me. Since then, and particularly through studying German, visiting Germany andbeing able to speak to Germans about complicated ideas in their own language, I’ve becomemuch more conscious of the similarities. Studying German culture, history and politics inL213/L303 has helped me understand the basis for the differences that do exist. (My expe-rience of talking to Swiss people about their stereotypes of Germans, and vice versa, hashelped in this process too.)

This final quotation sums up the experience of learners who have more exposure tothe countries of the other cultures, and highlights the fact that not every stereotypicalcharacteristic is totally unfounded.

As a student of German or someone with first hand experience of Germany, the overallpicture becomes more diverse and complex, although some stereotypical characteristics doseem well placed.

Discussion and conclusions

The research project set out to investigate a group of advanced distance adultlearners of German. The results show that these learners are very diverse and bringa large variety of backgrounds and experiences to the study of German at theOUUK. They were mature students with considerable life experience, whichcontributed to their study. All the students were familiar with the mode anddemands of studying languages at a distance. For the large part, their motivation intaking this course was to consolidate their knowledge of the language and thecultures of Germany and other German-speaking countries, as well as gaining aqualification. This is reflected in their responses to the learning outcomes. Overall,these students felt that they had managed to achieve the prescribed learningoutcomes at a level that came as a surprise to the researchers. They had gainedlanguage-related skills, as well as accruing considerable amounts of knowledgeitems, had worked autonomously and gained professional and cognitive skills.Typically, these language students were more confident in their receptive than theirproductive skills. The project has provided unique evidence as to whether the spec-ified learning outcomes are achievable on a course like this. As for interculturalcompetence, it can be said that these students achieved a high level of interculturalcompetence in the course of their study. This is supported by the evidence of their

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assignment results, their own perception of the relevant learning outcomes state-ments and, furthermore, by their reflective comments.

The new and innovative methodology chosen to assess intercultural competencegain for this project has generated a range of useful results, which demonstrates thatit has achieved its aims.

These students were motivated and wanted to gain insights into German-speakingcountries and their cultures; they demonstrated their achievement of this aim by theirresponses to the relevant learning outcomes, their high assessment results and theresults of the knowledge items testing. The slightly patchy results of the knowledgeitems testing in the questionnaire was counter-balanced by the scores they achievedwhile actually studying the course. Overall, it is clear that students preferred somethemes (migration, German dialects) in the course to others, which might be thereason why they remembered more about them. And the time lapse between studyingthe course and the survey was not insignificant, especially with regard to the earliestpart of the course. Further research would be needed to determine why some knowl-edge items were more easily retained than others.

The (stereo)typical views towards Germans and Germany of the general Britishpublic are widely regarded as an impediment to better Anglo-German relations, andvarious studies have been conducted with subgroups to look into these stereotypicalviews (see, among others, Coleman, 1996; Löschmann & Stroinska, 1998; Sammon,1998; and, more recently, Baumann & Shelley, 2003). However, as far as the OUUKlearners of German are concerned, they appear to have different attitudes from theirfellow countrymen and countrywomen, and are more positively inclined towardsGermans.

References

Baumann, U. & Shelley, M. (2003) Adult learners of German at the Open University: their knowl-edge of, and attitudes towards Germany, Open Learning, 18(1), 61–74.

Bausch, M., Christ, H. & Krumm, H. (Eds) (1997) Interkulturelles Lernen im Fremdsprachenunter-richt (Tübingen, Günter Narr).

Byram, M. (1993) Foreign language teaching and multicultural education, in: A. S. King & M. J.Reiss (Eds) The multicultural dimension of the national curriculum (London, Falmer Press), 173–186.

Byram, M. (1997) Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence (Clevedon, Multi-lingual Matters).

Byram & Tost Planet (2001) Social identity and European dimension: intercultural competence throughforeign language learning. Available online at: http://www.ecml.at/documents/identityE.pdf(accessed 10 February 2005).

Byram, M. & Zarate, G. (Eds) (1997) The sociocultural and intercultural dimension of language learn-ing and teaching (Clevedon, Multilingual Matters).

Byram, M., Nichols, A. & Stevens, D. (2001) Developing intercultural competence in practice(Clevedon, Multilingual Matters).

Coleman, J. A. (1996) Studying languages: a survey of British and European students (London,CILT).

Council of Europe (2001) Common European framework of references for languages, learning, teachingand assessment (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press).

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Jordan, S. (2002) Intercultural issues in foreign language learning and ethnographic approachesstudy abroad, The guide to good practice for learning and teaching in languages, linguistics and areastudies (Southampton, Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies). Availableonline at: http://www.lang.ltsn.ac.uk/resources/guidecontents.aspx (accessed 14 September2004).

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Language learning in intercultural perspective: approaches through drama and ethnography(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), 16–31.

Löschmann, M. & Stroinska, M. (Eds) (1998) Stereotype im Fremdsprachenunterricht (Frankfurt amMain, Peter Lang).

Sammon, G. (1998) Stereotype im Deutschlandbild britischer und irischer Schüler und Schülerin-nen, in: M. Löschmann & M. Stroinska (Eds) Stereotype im Fremdsprachenunterricht (Frankfurtam Main, Peter Lang), 73–108.

Sercu, L. (2002) Autonomous learning and the acquisition of intercultural communicative compe-tence: some implications for course development, Language, Culture and Curriculum, 15(1),61–74.

Shelley, M. & Baumann, U. (2005) Assessing intercultural competence gain in a German distancelearning course for adults, in: B. Holmberg, M. Shelley, & C. White (Eds) Languages anddistance education: evolution and change (Clevedon, Multilingual Matters), 119–139.

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Documents

Distance learners of German and intercultural competence