In the contribution, we present a design of new elective course entitled Multilingual Communication, intended for home and international students at the Faculty of Arts, Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia. The course is based on the peer-learning concept and concept of reflexive learning.
The main takeaways from our contribution are:
1. How can the concept of multilingualism and multilingual communication be implemented in teaching and learning.
2. Why peer-learning is important in practice-oriented courses focused on developing students' competencies in the given settings.
3. How differently do students perceive the use of multiple languages within the activities to develop multilingual communicative competence.
Multilingual situations are regular in today's globalised world, and they are typically related to the need to communicate with people from various countries speaking various languages. In these circumstances, English can not always be used as a lingua franca, and we need to communicate effectively using more languages. That's why we want to present the course focused on multilingual communication. The main goal of the course is to provide students with foundations for multilingual communication and develop several key competencies – multilingual communicative competence, receptive multilingualism, intercomprehension and language mediation competence. Attending the course, students are expected to become more experienced in multilingual communication and use these skills during their studies and later in their work lives too. In the course context, we primarily work with the perception of multilingualism presented by Jan Blommaert. His definition is based on the idea of "truncated" multilingualism. Since we never know "all" of a language, we always know specific bits and pieces of it (Blommaert, 2010). The aim is not to speak many languages perfectly but to effectively communicate in more languages in situations where it is needed.
It is crucial for us to present the results of this course not only from the teacher's point of view but also (and especially) from the point of view of the students who are also co-authors of the contribution. Firstly, we focus on the educational design and the concept of this new course and how the concepts of peer-learning, reflexive learning, or formative assessment are included in the course. In this context, we assume that the course concept has a positive impact on students' communicative competence in multilingual and multicultural internationalised environments. Teaching the course, we implement learning logs as a tool for reflections, self-evaluation, and assessment. Effective implementation of learning logs within the course is a challenge; however, we supposed it could support students' activity and learning. The next part of the contribution is concentrated on students' perceptions of the course and their reflection regarding not only the content of the course but also their learning and progress (self-evaluation) and the concept of the course as such. Finally, we present a specific example of a multilingual activity to engage the audience and demonstrate the methods used in the course.
Literature:
BLOMMAERT, Jan. The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-511-76962-0. 213 p.
