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Intercultural Communicative Competence – A Competitive Advantage for Global Employability
Start date: Sep 1, 2015, End date: Aug 31, 2017 PROJECT  FINISHED 

For higher education (HE) to better prepare graduates for jobs in the increasingly mobile international labour market and further European integration, communication barriers such as cultural stereotypes, identity conflict, language deficiency and the lack of interactive skills must be addressed. This two-year project aims to establish a pool of 20 experts in the field of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and language training who will work together to develop and pilot innovative ICC educational materials and methodology guidelines which will be adopted by further educators. The project will benefit 120 students directly in the first year, 500-800 students in the second year and about 1700 new language students in multiplier effects after the project's completion. Responding to this EU language policy need, 5 partner institutions from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom will collaborate to address this need. Each partner is a recognised HE institution or ICC training specialist with long-standing expertise in foreign language and ICC teaching, methodology and/or telecollaboration. The main objective of the project is to increase ICC competences and skills (the multiple abilities to interact effectively and appropriately across cultures) in HE for global employability; while the specific objective is to enhance and innovate ICC language teaching and learning in HE by gathering and disseminating best practices and through the integration of an information communication technology (ICT) platform of telecollaboration; to boost both students’ and teachers’ virtual mobility; to implement innovative ICC formats into the HE curricula; and to support the concept of English/Spanish as a Lingua Franca in the context of internationalisation of European HE system. An important component of the project will be telecollaboration and a survey on ICC Best Practice. Case studies, journal articles, a specialist seminar and an international conference will be used to widely disseminate project results while the produced teaching materials will be available for HE educators post project as a long term benefit for all target groups. This project has been developed in close consultation and cooperation with the partners and stakeholders. Regular virtual as well as physical transnational meetings are planned for project monitoring of all activities and outputs as well as communication via VoIP and e-mail. The key people involved in the project are experienced HE educators and ICC trainers with long-standing expertise in the areas mentioned above. The legacy of this project will be a website of key resources in ICC for other educators, increased human capital in a group of experts who will share their knowledge by training others, influencing students and future teachers in life long training projects, and finally the HE students who will be more employable and aware of the need to truly become internationally aware if they wish to succeed.
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