A Critical Analysis of 'Developing Intercultural Competence in the Language Classroom' by Bennett, Bennett and Allen

3 Abstract: Awareness of one's own culture and the cultural differences between societies is a part of intercultural competence. At the centre of the present paper is the essay 'Developing Intercultural Competence in the Language Classroom' by Bennett, Bennett and Allen in which the authors draw a parallel between the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) and the ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) Guidelines for Language Proficiency. The authors argue that the development of intercultural competence is a mixture of culture-specific and culture general approaches. The present paper summarized the DMIS and evaluated the parallel drawn between DMIS and the ACTFL Guidelines. A critique of the applicability of this parallel follows with suggestions about a more efficient implementation of the model.