World Languages and Cultures

Learning Communities (LC) represent an alternative model of teaching and learning in higher education that can foster intercultural competence and knowledge. "Some of the distinctive features of LCs are that they are usually smaller than most units on campus, they help overcome the isolation of faculty members from one another and their students, they encourage continuity and integration in the curriculum and they help build a sense of group identity, cohesion and "specialness"" (O'Connor 2003). Having integrated a Spanish language LC at our institution we found this model to produce positive academic and affective outcomes. This model engages disaffected second language (L2) learners, helps keep first- and second-year students in school, and helps Latino students feel supported (Trujillo 2009). This paper focuses on how this model additionally helps to develop intercultural competence by describing the implementation of assignments and the interethnic and intraethnic interactions in the course. (Contains 1 footnote.) [This paper was published in: Proceedings of Intercultural Competence Conference August, 2010, Vol. 1, pp. 335-357.]