Interculturality and Social Awareness in a Spanish-as- a-Foreign-Language Classroom - a Solution to Conflicts Stemming From the Predomination of One Culture

Abstract

The society of today promotes intense intercultural contact due to factors such as globalization, trade or human migration. To overcome cultural conflicts and ensure that communication exchange is completely adequate to its context, it is imperative that foreign language learners develop intercultural competence. Through intercultural dialogue and the development of social consciousness we strive to disintegrate the injustices suffered by most deprived cultures. If we allow the dominance of one culture over the other, we are implicitly accomplices to negative consequences such as xenophobia or discrimination.
If human beings have a great responsibility, greater still is our responsibility as educators, given the cultural character of our profession; teaching a foreign language must inevitably favor the development intercultural speakers.
This article proposes solutions to put theory into practice in the classroom of Spanish as a foreign language.

Key words: interculturality, intercultural skill, social consciousness, cultural shock, foreign language acquisition