Internationalisation and the Role of the Language Teacher

A Personal Perspective from France

This article will discuss internationalisation and the role of the language teacher in the process: what is the purpose of internationalisation (educational, political, professional), what are the skills students develop, some key factors that influence internationalisation (the right institutional environment and the right teaching staff). The case study underlines the pivotal position of the language teacher in this endeavour and how a language class can become a laboratory for implementing a European and/or international dimension in the curriculum, in this case introducing a cross-cultural communication course within the foreign language class.