Intercultural communicative competence in SFL immersion courses, an experience with Australian students in Colombia (La competencia comunicativa intercultural en cursos de inmersión en ELE. Una experiencia con estudiantes australianos en Colombia)

The aim of this paper is to present the organization and implementation of an immersion course in Spanish as a foreign language (SFL) from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) of Australia, and the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (PUJ), Bogota, Colombia. The course was conducted over two weeks in Novem- ber 2012, and 10 Australian students participated. We present the experience and its results, among which we highlight the improvement in communicative competences, as well as cultural and intercultural competences of students, especially for having worked aspects intrinsically related such as language and culture. It is concluded that this type of courses allow a greater linguistic development and an invaluable cultural and intercultural learning for students that are in the acquisition process of the so called intercultural communicative competence.