UNITA label for Romance languages learning and Intercomprehension
The UNITA label can be defined as a quality assurance designation for courses focusing on intercomprehension (IC) and Romance languages. It signifies adherence to specific principles and standards aimed at enhancing learners’ plurilingual and pluricultural competence.
At its core, the UNITA label emphasizes the following key principles:
- Plurilingual and pluricultural competence
- Prioritization of communicative and interactive methodologies
- Fostering collaborative learning communities
Methodologies
UNITA courses are based on an interactive and communicative approach, centered on the student as a “social agent” and as an active participant in his/her own learning. They promote and enhance the Alli-ance’s linguistic and cultural plurality through practice and inclusiveness .
In particular, the aim of IC courses is to communicate in/through diverse plurilingual and multimodal resources, prioritizing the students’ national and regional romance languages, either reference language or mother tongue.
In Romance language and IC courses both oral and written skills are developed through a didactic per-spective which has to take into account the three dimensions of intercomprehension: reception, interpro-duction and interaction. With these trainings students broaden their perspectives and develop metalin-guistic awareness and learning skills allowing them undertake autonomous further language studies. Fur-thermore, the communicative skills are enhanced through task and project based collaborative learning (see the UCIL section below). All these courses promote the learner’s autonomy.
Materials
On the one hand, syllabuses and materials for IC courses are developed according to the REFIC framework and they take into account the diversity of languages and cultures of the Alliance. On the other hand, every Romance language course in necessarily based on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), which is an international standard for describing language ability.
While the material employed in the classroom has to be authentic, in IC courses it also must encompass a diverse range of national, regional and/or creole Romance languages within the same teaching unit or lesson (at least 3 languages per lesson). Suggested textbooks for IC:
Working Together
Both IC and Romance language courses aim to train learners to communicate with each other and to work in plurilingual “connected learning communities”. This enhances students engagement, motivation and learning outcomes, while also empowering teachers and promoting continued professional development.
IC courses are built around UCIL (UNITA Collaborative International Learning) programmes. The teaching methods are hybrid, based on face-to-face courses and online interaction, both written and oral, in pluri-lingual teams. Training is developed:
- locally, in each partner university, to practice written and oral reception and for moments of teacher-student mediation (local group, LG);
- online, in a Moodle forum, to practice written comprehension, interaction and interproduction (international group, IG);
- online, in pairs or small thematic working groups (WG) who practice written interaction and meet by videoconference to engage in oral comprehension, interaction and interproduction.
For Romance language courses, UCIL is suggested as a way of proposing virtual mobility to local students.
