PRACTICING INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCES THROUGH BLENDED LEARNING

The aim of this paper is to present a module for practicing intercultural communicative competences that was devised within the Intermar project - a European Cooperation Project funded by the EU Commission’s Lifelong Learning Programme, under Key Action 2 of the Transversal Programme - that ended in 2013 and whose major outcome was the creation of an effective "toolbox" available online on a learning platform (managed by the University of Sorbonne 3 in Paris). In this respect, 18 partners - mostly maritime and naval institutions (among which "Mircea cel Bătrân" Naval Academy of Constanţa) - have produced custom-designed courses in separate modules containing learning materials and collaborative tasks set in maritime contexts to be performed both by synchronous and asynchronous distance learning working groups. The principle lying at the core of this project was Intercomprehension (a natural form of communication, based on mutual comprehension) which encourages the development of plurilingual comprehension skills, and since seafarers come into contact with so many languages when onboard this innovative approach is more than welcome and useful to resort to; however, understanding and speaking languages alone are not sufficient. In addition, seafarers are required to live and work with colleagues that have diverse cultural backgrounds; therefore, the cultural component was introduced and dealt with in a separate module: Intercultural Awareness Module. After pointing out the importance of both blended learning and crosscultural communication skills, this paper will give the outline of the course module and focus particularly on activities that include face-to-face contact, self-directed tasks and e-learning on a par with pair work and role play, aiming to foster better relationships and enhance future seafarers’ wellbeing in the cultural melting pot that ships have become nowadays.