Romance cross-comprehension and on-line communication in the development of educational competences: a study of future teachers’ perspectives Mª Helena Araújo e Sá & Sílvia Melo Departamento de Didáctica e Tecnologia Educativa Universidade de Aveiro - Portugal

Research context On-line communication * recent forecasts point out that approximately one billion of the world population will have access to the Internet in 2005 * a great number of users in interpersonal communication is also anticipated Romance cross-comprehension “As international communication is increasingly intense and complex, and as Europe tends to adopt English as a common tool for linguistic exchanges, it is crucial to promote other means of linguistic integration, in particular through cross-comprehension in various families of languages" (DEGACHE; 2003).

Galanet approach Cross-comprehension between Castilian, French, Italian and Portuguese (through , chat and foruns of discussion) Collaborative work (in 5 phases) 1- “breaking the ice” 2- “choosing a theme” 3- “brainstorming” 4- “collecting documents and debate” 5-”elaborating and publishing the press dossier”

Educational competence Personal and interpersonal dimension attitudes, values, knowledge about oneself and about the Other Intercultural dimension the development of intercultural communicative competences, namely the skills of interpretation and interaction Teaching and learning development dimension a critical educative conscience, a political education perspective and the capacity to foresee educational actions and contexts.

On-line romance cross-comprehension perceived by Portuguese future teachers “in the beginning I was a bit scared with the chat dynamics“ "chat communication is something new for me (…) and when we are facing something new, we feel curious, we want to experiment it" "when there are barriers (both technical and linguistic), there is discovering and fascination"

Personal and interpersonal dimension key words: "interest", "motivation", "curiosity", "will", "opening" and "trust” (usually associated to languages, cultures and to the Other) "I have developed my interest and motivation towards RL in part because, surprisingly, I could understand them quite easily." (student N, 24/02)

Intercultural dimension development "language teaching is as much about oneself as about others" (Byram, 1999) this intercultural dimension involves attitudes, knowledge and skills "By knowing these languages, I become aware of their countries’ cultures and, by communicating with the Other, I 'give' him a little bit of my own culture; consequently, not only do I transmit it but also do I interiorize it better." (student P, 24/03)

Teaching and learning dimension Openness to the Other, understanding and accept of otherness (predicted as a future classroom scenario) Perception of the social teacher responsibility in children citizenship education Development of two pointed fundamental teachers' characteristics: motivation and self- knowledge

On-line communication tools: opportunity to develop educational competences virtual spaces, seen as circumstances of plurilingual needs development and as spaces of interaction and communicative skills improvement, can be usefully used in the development of educational competences growing conscience of belonging to a linguistic and cultural community, with a common background and similar purposes, but with particular and located specificities. deconstruction of linguistic and cultural representations, as far as discovery of stereotypes and the reflection about scholar practices