Most Relevant IC Bibliography

The EuRom4 project (funded via the European Commission’s LINGUA program between 1989 and 1997) and its direct structural successor EuRom5 (2011) represent a monumental pillar in Romance language intercomprehension. Pioneered by the legendary French linguist Claire Blanche-Benveniste, this methodology assumes that any speaker of a Romance language has a spontaneous, imperfect, but highly functional receptive capability in sister languages.

While the Galatea group relied heavily on individual computer programs and tracking online messaging interactions, the EuRom groups combined comparative macro-linguistics with practical reading and listening comprehension of simultaneous languages using real-world press materials.

The network spanned four foundational universities in EuRom4 (Aix-en-Provence, Rome, Lisbon, and Salamanca) and expanded to include Barcelona (introducing Catalan) for EuRom5. The critical bibliography and institutional actors of this lineage are detailed below in unstyled HTML formatting with clean spacing.

1. The Foundational EuRom4 Project (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese)

• Blanche-Benveniste, C., Valli, A. et al. (1997). Le projet EuRom4: Un outil d’apprentissage simultané des langues romanes. Florence: La Nuova Italia. This is the overarching initial handbook and manifesto, defining how four languages can be decoded concurrently based on cross-linguistic transparency.
• Blanche-Benveniste, C. (1997). L’experience Eurom4: comment négocier les difficultés. Le français dans le monde, Numéro spécial, 41-47. This paper addresses how cognitive blockages disappear once students are taught to accept partial, functional text comprehension.
• Blanche-Benveniste, C. & Valli, A. (Eds.) (1997). L’intercompréhension: le cas des langues romanes. Special Issue of Le Français dans le Monde, Recherches et applications. Paris: Hachette.

2. The Iberian Hubs (Universidad de Salamanca & Universidade de Lisboa)

• Sanz Pastor, C. (1997). La lectura simultánea en lenguas afines: el proyecto EuRom4 en España. Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca. A deep-dive exploration detailing the learning rates of native Spanish students encountering European Portuguese or Italian structures for the first time.
• Chagas, J. (2000). A intercompreensão de línguas românicas: contributos do projecto EuRom4 em Portugal. Lisboa: Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa.

3. The Evolution into EuRom5 (Adding Catalan & Modern Testing)

• Bonvino, E., Caddéo, S., Vilaginés Serra, E. & Pippa, S. (2011). EuRom5: Ler e compreender 5 línguas românicas (Português, Español, Català, Italiano, Français). Milan: Hoepli. The official structural continuation manual which fully modernized the curriculum, integrated a digital audio database, and inserted Catalan as the fifth operational language.
• Vilaginés Serra, E. (2013). La introducció del català a l’EuRom5: reptes de la intercomprensió a la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Barcelona: UAB. This traces the alignment of Catalan phonetics and morphology within the collective grammar frameworks designed by the original EuRom network.

4. Modern Innovations by the Roma Tre Group (Expanding EuRom5)

Following the launch of EuRom5, the research group led by Elisabetta Bonvino at Università degli Studi Roma Tre pushed the boundaries of the method away from static reading tracks into dynamic cognitive fields:

A. Oral Intercomprehension & Auditory Mechanics

• Cortés Velásquez, D. (2015). Intercomprensione orale. Ricerca e pratiche didattiche. Firenze: Le Lettere. A landmark book that single-handedly addressed a historic gap in IC research by shifting the focus from passive reading into the complex cognitive mechanics of spoken phonetics, listening, and real-time auditory decoding.
• Cortés Velásquez, D. & Bonvino, E. (2016). La intercomprensión y la enseñanza de las lenguas raíces: propuesta para una formación metacognitiva a la comprensión oral. Actes du XXVIIe Congrès international de linguistique et de philologie romanes. This work structures exact training paths to help students monitor their own mental biases while listening to an unstudied sister language.

B. Cognitive Reading Strategies & Metacognitive Assessment

• Bonvino, E., Fiorenza, E. & Cortés Velásquez, D. (2018). Observing Strategies in Intercomprehension Reading. Some Clues for Assessment in Plurilingual Settings. Frontiers in Communication, 3:29. A vital study establishing rigorous, empirical parameters to track and observe what is actually happening in a learner’s head when they navigate multiple related languages at once, providing core clues for language trainers.
• Bonvino, E. & Cortés Velásquez, D. (2016). Il lettore plurilingue. In: L’intercomprensione dall’italiano o verso l’italiano. This text examines how reading strategies shift drastically when a reader is consciously transformed into a plurilingual processing agent via the EuRom methods.

C. Inclusive Applications & Translanguaging

• Bonvino, E. & Fiorenza, E. (2021). Translanguaging, intercomprensione e didattica inclusiva in contesti svantaggiati. Venezia: Edizioni Ca Foscari. This expanded the group’s university framework into an activist methodology, demonstrating how intercomprehension and translanguaging function as robust tools for the linguistic and social inclusion of disadvantaged migrant populations.