Abstract
The promotion of multilingualism is a very important aspect in the language policies of the European Union. Therefore several study programmes have been devised, with the aim of promoting the mobility of EU citizens. An example of this is the Erasmus Mundus project, a programme for cooperation and mobility in higher education with the principal objectives of promoting intercultural understanding. The Master of Cultural Landscapes (MACLANDS) is one of several study courses within the Erasmus Mundus project. Course participants spend approximately 24 months at three different universities in France, Italy and Germany, and consequently need to learn French, Italian and German. This article considers theoretical and practical issues arising from this, and is based on my personal experience teaching a German-as-a-foreign-language course to a group of students about to embark on a study period in Germany, as participants in the MACLANDS programme. The learning objectives were adapted as far as possible to the learners' needs, and a communicative language teaching methodology was adopted. The classroom activities we carried out focused mainly on speaking and listening skills reflecting the participants' perceived needs. In this way, we were able to create a stimulating atmosphere for comparison and reflection in sociolinguistic, morphosyntactic, lexical and cultural terms, through a constant process of interaction between the teacher and students.
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