The S.P.I.C.E.S. second International meeting of which the University of Malta is a partner through the participation of Dr Sandro Caruana will be held at the Corinthia Jerma Palace Hotel in Marsascala between April 27 and April 29. This project is funded by the European Union.
SPICES is the acronym for Social Promotion of Intercultural Communication Expertise and Skills. Why "expertise" and "skills", and not simply "competence"? Everyone is becoming more aware that expertise as theoretical knowledge is no longer sufficient in many fields to be successful on the job market.
Stress must be made on practical skills in relation to theoretical knowledge, namely the ability to apply theoretical knowledge. However, the ability to apply theoretical knowledge has to be developed. Having detailed knowledge in an academic field is simply not sufficient.
It is also not sufficient to have good skills without the necessary theoretical background. Otherwise, this would mean that certain behavioural skills would be applied, as if a 'recipe', without a critical awareness of what is really going on in a specific situation.
This is especially evident in the field of communication. It is not sufficient to know everything about existing communication theories to be or become a good communicator. It is even more complicated when communication goes on between individuals referring to different cultural backgrounds, values, beliefs, and behaviour models.
Therefore, to acquire a complete intercultural communication competence, it is extremely important to focus on both aspects - expertise and skills - as the two sides of the same coin in a training course. While expertise - as theoretical competence - is easier to acquire, intercultural communication skills, like practical competence, have to be acquired through personal experience and by means of training.
Intercultural communication training, more often labelled as "international communication training", is not new. Such training, especially for managers and staff of multinational companies, has existed for several decades.
Spices training courses will focus on "social promotion" of "intercultural communication expertise and skills"; i.e., the promotion of intercultural communication expertise and skills will have a predominantly social, rather than an economic, purpose.
The overall aim is to spread this competence in a concrete, practical way through training of intercultural communication facilitators, mediators, educators, and language teachers. These categories are the direct targets of the Spices project.
They will in turn become responsible for further training of final adult beneficiaries. The adult beneficiaries may be considered the indirect targets of Spices, those who need to develop an intercultural communication competence.
More information is available on www.um.edu.mt/noticeboard/spices.pdf