STEPS TOWARDS THE DEVELOPMENT OF OUR COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN A EUROPEAN CULTURAL ENVIRONMENT Our project emerges not only from the necessity to develop communicative skills, but also from our dreams and hopes to open a window to Europe and to build a path that our students can walk to enrich themselves through personal and direct interaction with other European students. Our previous experience with a Comenius project tells us that it is the best way to boost students' interest and motivation to communicate correctly in foreign languages, and also, in their mother tongue. The formative actions that we intend to develop in this project are strongly connected to this main objective. In language updating courses, two teachers will adquire the necessary command and self-confidence in order to increase the quality in their classrooms; in addition, more relevant and significant learning will take place using authentic materials in the correct contexts. Teachers will be able to offer a greater variety of language functions and real situations to their students. On the other hand, the course on new teaching tools and methods will be the key to improve motivation and attention to diversity; one of our teachers will be responsible for spreading these new teaching tools to the rest of language teachers. Finally, our plan is to strengthen our european dimension participating in a structured study visit in which one teacher wil be able to experience seminars, workshops, school visits, lesson observation sessions, study of the Irish education system and cultural and professional exchanges with teacher from different European countries. The teacher responsible for this activity will be the bilingual CLIL project coordinator in our school since one of her duties is the promotion of international projects. She will have the chance to open a window to Europe and prepare the way for a future strategic asociation in our school community. Once personal contacts with other schools are achieved, we will throw ourselves to the use of the e-Twinning platform in order to develop and fulfil the aims of the project. Teachers committed to this project must comply with some implementation and dissemination requirements once the movilities are finished. One of the most important requirements will be the use of PEL and Europass documents by the teacher. Presenting a certificate of assistance will be necessary, but being familiar and keeping Europass and PEL updated will be mandatory just as well. The use of these documents must be spread among the rest of teachers and students of all levels and disciplines. Generally speaking, we hope to get results such as the increase of quality in foreign language teaching, improvement in the treatment of diversity and the creation of professional contacts in order to prepare future strategic associations and the development of European Language Portfolio, Language Integrated Curriculum and the Language General Plan in our school. Finally, the long-term benefits that we can expect as a result of this project are: significant improvement of general communicative competence for all our students and, as a direct consequence, improvement in the academic outcome of all subjects; efective development of strategic asociations with other European countries, increase in satisfaction rates of students and parents and increase in our school's prestige.