Multilingual Practices: Tackling Challenges and Creating Opportunities (FutureLearn)

The challenges and opportunities that we will speak of will be recognisable for learners. The course will also introduce you to real multilingual families who will share their personal experiences with their multilingual situations with you. The issues arising from the individual situations of our families will then be looked at from a scientific perspective.

What topics will you cover?

- Definition of multilingualism from an individual and a research perspective

- Language attitudes towards different languages

- Multilingualism in the urban scenery (linguistic landscaping)

- Language policies and the protection of endangered languages

- Heritage language maintenance and transmission in multilingual communities

- Advantages and challenges of multilingualism in the workplace

- Multilingualism in education (the case of the trilingual education)

- The role of the English language in multilingual education models

- The cognitive advantage of bi- or multilinguals

- Types and features of minority languages

- New speakers of minority languages

- Language contact (contact linguistics)

What will you achieve?

- Identify central aspects around societal and individual multilingualism

- Evaluate the benefits of multilingualism of both minority and migrant speakers

- Identify issues that arise when people who do not share the same languages meet

- Critically evaluate multilingual language policies for both migrant and minority languages

- Investigate multilingual practices

Who is the course for?

This course is aimed at a wide range of people with an interest in multilingualism such as migrants, linguistics and language students, teachers, language policy makers, professionals who are working in a multilingual environment or parents, who are considering to raise their children multilingually.

It may also be an interesting addition for learners who participated in University of Southampton’s course on Understanding Language.

However, no prior knowledge is required to take part in the course and we welcome anyone who is curious to know more about multilingual practices.