New curriculum for the seafarers of the new era: building the intercultural dimension in the CAPTAINS platform for maritime English

Abstract

The maritime industry is always open to building new technologies and answering the specific needs of new seafarers in the way English is taught. In this context and in an intercultural perspective, we will analyse ‘CAPTAINS’, a project undertaken in the Leonardo da Vinci European framework and carried out by an international consortium of partners. Indeed, the idea that the specificities of multicultural crews must be taken into account as early as their training period to counterbalance communication problems onboard has been the focus of research for both maritime practitioners and language instructors. Nevertheless, integrated approaches featuring the collaboration of all relevant stakeholders are rare, and the results are not always easily transposable to practical applications. The present paper is an attempt to analyse the intercultural dimension of maritime English, to elaborate what constitutes added intercultural value in a sector specific sense and to incorporate said elements in concrete learning items with the aid of novel language learning approaches.