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　スウェーデンのダーラナ大学は，2012年から韓国，中国・台湾，日本の大学とオンライン多文化交流会を行っている。欧州評議会推奨の文化間能力の育成を念頭に，母語や社会文化背景の異なる中上級の日本語学習者と日本語母語話者が日本語で交流し，自文化を振り返り，他文化を理解することが目的だ。交流会は各学期8週間に4回セッションが行われる。各国混合チームに分かれ，社会文化問題について作文を書き，オンラインで会い，対話している。

　本稿では，この交流会における文化間能力に焦点を当て，2020年と2021年の母語話者と欧州の学習者の交流会後アンケート等の回答に，Byram（1997, 2009）の5つの文化間能力の要素が見られるかを分析した。両者共，異文化による誤解の回避の工夫（スキル）や，異なる考えの尊重（態度），自文化の気づきなど5つの要素が見られた。一方，文化背景から意見が言えない母語話者や，文化間能力を過信している欧州の学習者がいることも判明した。

Since 2012, the Japanese Department at Dalarna University in Sweden has organised multicultural online sessions with universities in South Korea, China/Taiwan and Japan. These have been designed to provide students (intermediate learners and native speakers of Japanese) with the opportunity to develop their intercultural competence by way of interaction in Japanese with students who have different mother tongues and socio-cultural backgrounds.

The online sessions are held four times over eight weeks each term, with students from the universities being put into small groups. Prior to each session, the students write an essay on a topic related to social and cultural issues in either Japan or their own country that they then share with the members of their group. Together, they then meet online to discuss the essays. The participants are asked to have “dialogues" that involve deep discussions.

This study aims to explore whether the multicultural online sessions help students to develop their intercultural competence. After the 2020 and 2021 sessions, the participants were asked to respond to a questionnaire. The responses of the Japanese and European students (Dalarna University students are from both Sweden and other European countries) were analysed in relation to the five dimensions of intercultural competence put forward by Byram (1997, 2009). The results show that all five dimensions are apparent in students’ discussions. Also apparent was the fact many of the Japanese students felt it difficult to express their opinion because of their cultural background whereas some of the European students were overly confident in terms of their intercultural competence.