Illustrating the Intercultural in Portuguese Secondary School Foreign Language (FL) Classrooms

Abstract

This article reports on a small-scale action research project developed in the contextof the practicum of a Teacher Education Masters course at the Faculty of Letters, the Universityof Porto. The project was focussed on the importance of visual stimuli in the foreign languageteaching classroom (English and Spanish), within the context of an intercultural approach.Different strategies, activities and materials were employed with the general aim of helping thelearners to develop their critical cultural awareness. The learners played a central role,participating actively, by bringing into the classroom their own knowledge of the world.Simultaneously, the role of the teacher was not without importance in this action researchproject, presenting herself as an example of a cultural mediator.