Mª Helena Araújo e Sá & Sílvia Melo Departamento de Didáctica e Tecnologia Educativa Universidade de Aveiro - Portug

1. 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

2. 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).

3. Galanet approach • Cross-comprehension between Castilian, French, Italian and Portuguese (through e-mail, 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”

4. 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.

5. 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"

6. 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)

7. 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)

8. 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

9. 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