Intercultural Awareness in English Language Teacher Education: a comparative analysis between Italy and Spain

During the latest decades, intercultural awareness has become a key competence for language teachers. Societies nowadays are diverse in Europe, but issues such as xenophobia remain. The language classroom is the ideal space to promote understanding and tolerance, but language teachers should receive training to overcome their stereotypes and prejudices and be able to help students do the same. The European Union is taking a step forward to promote interculturality in initial language teacher education. However, there’s a lack of common ground since training programs have a national approach. This paper compares two European training models: the Spanish and the Italian. A critical review identifies the strengths, weaknesses, and areas of convergence. Finally, our proposal presents a more comprehensive English language teacher education model through concrete examples to practice in the university classroom, being easily adaptable to any European training program in our quest for common ground.