Abstract: (Reflections on epistemological paradigms in foreign language teaching) In this article, we will evoke a teaching experience that occurred within the framework of an immersion course attended by Romanian and French-speaking students at the “Iuliu Haţieganu” University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Cluj-Napoca. The original goal of the course was to create a didactic context for developing the students’ language proficiency. However, the learning activities, which had been designed to meet the course participants’ expectations and had been tailored to their interests, led to the development of the students’ and the trainers’ intercultural competence. More than that, they also fostered questions, searches and reflections about the teaching process as a means of generating constructions of meaning, of identity, of power relations, etc. This article proposes an analysis of certain practices used in the teaching of foreign languages, in relation with the epistemological context. It also highlights the advantages of adapting the teaching discourse to the real needs and expectations of present-day students – citizens of the twenty-first century.