Learning foreign languages implies a socio- affective dimension which can be gauged through students' images of those languages and of its speakers and through their attitudes towards them; these images, attitudes and stereotypes are developed inside interactions and have many origins: the linguistic and intercultural contacts experienced by individuals, the contexts and the aims of learning and the role of other mediators (such as school and mass media) between students and Otherness. Playing an important role in the construction of knowledge, which includes acquired knowledge in the classroom, and in the building and maintenance of relations with the Other, it becomes necessary to make these images and attitudes emerge, shedding light on the factors that intervene on their process of construction, namely on students' academic evolvement. Within the framework of the projects GALANET and Images of languages in intercultural communication , two studies were developed with the same students from the Languages and Business Relations Course at the University of Aveiro in order to draw their linguistic and communicative profiles (academic year 2001/2002) and to shed light on their profiles as to the four foreign languages in their curricula: Chinese, English, French and German (academic year 2003/2004). As they are studying four foreign languages, they are a particularly interesting public in terms of trying to understand the relationship between learning environment, languages of study and personal linguistic and communicative profiles of these students. Here we include students' motivations, their ability to think of themselves in relative terms, their valuing of others, and their ability to use their communicative skills in an intercultural environment. Within the scope of this paper and bearing in mind Byram's Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) model (1997), we will present a comparative study which takes into account data collected from the two studies referred to before: two questionnaires and written essays on individual conceptions towards foreign languages. We will try: a) to highlight the predispositions/attitudes of learners towards intercultural contacts, namely with Chinese, English, French and German speakers; b) to determine how positively or negatively students' images and attitudes and their ICC evolved, and finally; c) to determine how their academic background influenced that evolution, namely the contacts experienced with those foreign languages and cultures. GALANET - Site pour le developpement de l'intercomprehension en langues romanes - Programme funded by SOCRATES/LINGUA, Acção D, coordinated by Christian Degache, University of Grenoble, France. Funded by FEDER, Eixo 2, Medida 2.3 POCTI- Programa Operacional "Ciencia, Tecnologia, Inovação", do QCA III, coordinated by Maria Helena Araújo e Sa, University of Aveiro, Portugal.