Facilitating Intercultural Communicative Competence through a Multiliteracies approach: musical input as the missing link

Abstract

Foreign Language (FL) learning has undergone a shift away from the communicative approach and towards a pedagogy of Multiliteracies. In an ever-changing society characterized by a digital and multicultural context, the necessity of developing Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) in FL learning across all levels through a pedagogy of Multiliteracies has become a priority. In this regard, musical input is an ideal medium to explore culture in the FL learning classroom which enables the integration of affective experiences from an intercultural perspective. The reasons for the implementation of musical input into FL learning curricula to develop ICC is twofold: on the one hand, it may serve to stimulate students’ awareness towards the target culture; and, on the other hand, it may be an effective way to engage students in intercultural encounters from an affective point of view. A corpus has been designed in order to analyze those studies on the development of ICC in FL learning across all levels through a Multiliteracies approach. The findings demonstrate that the use of musical input to develop ICC in the FL learning classroom through a pedagogy of Multiliteracies is scarce. Moreover, this study seeks to promote musical input-based activities to facilitate the development of ICC in the FL learning classroom through a Multiliteracies pedagogy.