Raising intercultural awareness at a public high school by means of a didactic sequence

Abstract

Raising intercultural awareness is a process of negotiating meaning and to have a shared understanding among people with different ideas, opinions and beliefs; it is about appreciating difference as the rule, not the exception. Public schools do not usually work with resources which engage students in intercultural exchanges and intercultural encounters; as a result, five units were put together into a didactic sequence in order to raise intercultural awareness and notice language; so that seventh grade students find the English that makes them happy (Blommaert, 2016). Results shed light on the complex process students go through when interacting with disbelief and curiosity, yet the main findings account as evidence of the significant changes students went through after explicit instruction by means of a didactic sequence. In the concluding section, the author highlights the need of taking into account students’ wants and needs, as well as the prior knowledge and beliefs they have.