‘Do you know Naomi?’: researching the intercultural competence of teachers who teach Greek as a second language in immigrant classes

Abstract

The view according to which second/foreign language teaching should include an intercultural dimension has gained ground during recent decades. The basic aim of teaching a second/foreign language concerns not only the acquisition of communicational competence, but also the acquisition of intercultural communicational competence. This paper presents research which examined the intercultural competence of teachers who teach the Greek language as a second language in immigrant classes. The main question of the research was whether, and to what extent, the teachers in this study promoted effective intercultural communication while teaching the second language and, in general, to what extent they had the ability to take advantage of the cultural diversity which characterized their classes.