ROMA TALES - OPPORTUNITY FOR INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

The current article looks at the opportunity for using Roma tales as an opportunity for intercultural communication. The experience of encountering Roma characters in the stories is Roma children read is pivotal for their self-awareness, understanding of moral values and the development of their self-esteem. By reading Roma stories, Roma children have better success at understanding their own traditions and characteristics; discover their own identity within the general settings of educational environment with intercultural communication. On the other hand, students of non-Roma origin meet different and unknown to them characters and by doing so, enrich their world perspective. The fairy-tale Roma characters, as well as the characters of other ethnicities, are carriers of universal human values. They carry the specifics of the Roma soul which provoke the readers’ curiosity and bring about an appreciation. Communicating with the artistic text makes the Roma children an active participant when discussing universal values. The article presents a pedagogical experiment with students from Rakitovo, Stara Zagora and Banya, where mainly Roma children are taught.