Promoting Intercultural Competence through Critical Discourse Analysis: An Intervention Proposal for 1st-Year Basque University Students

Abstract

In minority-language contexts, such as the Basque Country, EFL education generally adopts an acculturation approach, consisting of learning the history and culture of English-speaking cultures without considering the students’ local culture, which may undermine local learner identity. This Master’s Dissertation presents an intervention proposal to foster intercultural competence (IC) in first-year Basque university students by integrating Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Task-Based Learning (TBL) as methodological tools in the EFL classroom. In doing so, an enculturation-based alternative is presented, as students’ local identities are considered in learning the foreign language. In the proposed intervention, learners are encouraged to critically reflect on and deconstruct texts by identifying underlying power dynamics and ideologies and by comparing implicit cultural connections between Basque and English-speaking cultures. Although the proposal has not yet been implemented, a theoretical evaluation has been carried out through a SWOT analysis, thereby validating its potential. The dissertation concludes with a reflection on the potential integration of the CDA and TBL frameworks as successful, providing a valuable pedagogical structure to adopt an enculturation-based approach in minority-language contexts. Finally, limitations related to the scarcity of materials and the need for teacher training are discussed, along with recommendations for future research.