Intercomprehension for Language for Specific Purposes

Intercomprehension is a communicative approach where several languages of the same linguistic family are studied/used in parallel; these are either languages related to the learner’s mother tongue (or the language of education) or related to a language already learnt.

There is a systematic focus on receptive skills, as the development of comprehension is the most tangible way of using the knowledge of a related language to learn a new one.

This specific approach is characterized by one distinguishing feature: whole linguistic families (the Romance family in our case) are the object of learning activities. The only pre-condition needed is that one of the languages must be already mastered by the learners, either as their mother tongue or as a second language (FREPA 2012: 7).

The virtual activities will be carried out autonomously by the students and are based on the plurilingual online course “Elementi di Intercomprensione”, freely available on the Start@unito platform.

A meeting will be first organized to explain the syllabus of the course, its goals and requirements. Two other online meetings will check students’ progress and propose collaborative tasks and exercises.

During the intensive week students will consolidate knowledge and skills developed during the online part of the BIP; furthermore, they will focus on the techniques and principles of IC in Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) contexts, participating to content classes (using video recordings, simulations, or actual classes depending on availability). The choice of the LSPs to be dealt with will also be based on the profile of the students enrolled in the program