Arqus Plurilingualism Module piloted at Vilnius University
Arqus
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08 Apr 2025
Arqus Plurilingual and Intercultural Hub and Vilnius University offered the pilot version of the Plurilingualism Module from October 2024 until February 2025.
The commitment to promote plurilingualism and multiculturalism is one of the key identifying features and goals of the Arqus European Alliance. To achieve this, the Plurilingual and Intercultural Hub offers a wide range of language and culture-related resources and activities. These include online language courses, summer schools, the Arqus Café, the Arqus Lounge, EMI programmes, and a webinar series about various language and culture-related aspects.
The members of the Plurilingual and Intercultural Hub decided to put several of these activities under the umbrella of an online Plurilingualism Module in order to provide a structure for participants to work on their plurilingualism and pursue the European goal of 1+2 languages (i.e. European citizens being able to speak their first language and two foreign languages). The first planning meeting was held in October 2023 in Vilnius, where members from Vilnius University and Leipzig University discussed the organisation and implementation of the module. In the fall semester of 2024, Vilnius University offered the pilot version of the module.
The Arqus Plurilingualism Module is a self-paced module, which means that participants complete each structural part of the module at their own pace. The four structural parts are:
- theoretical aspects of linguistics and multilingualism,
- formal learning of a language (participating in an online A1 language course),
- informal learning of a language (e.g. taking part in Arqus language café) and
- individual reflection.
As the module was piloted by Vilnius University, the participants took an A1 Lithuanian course (taught by Dr Daiva Litvinskaitė) and attended theoretical lectures given by professors from Vilnius University that were more focused on Lithuanian (socio)linguistical aspects. These included the following:
- “The Socio-Cultural Context of Lithuania from International Students’ Perspectives” (associate professor Loreta Chodzkienė),
- “Language acquisition through sensory engagement” (associate professor Giedrė Balčytytė),
- “Every-day life culture in Lithuania” (associate professor Inga Hilbig),
- “Current Sociolinguistic Situation in Lithuania” (Professor Meilutė Ramonienė),
- “History of the Lithuanian Language” (associate professor Gintarė Judžentytė-Šinkūnienė) and
- “Lithuanian women’s literature” (Dr Daiva Litvinskaitė).
Participants of the module had to work independently as well. They were required to turn in a short paragraph about each theory lecture they attended and to write both an initial self-reflection (based on the European Language Passport) and a final self-reflection (based on guided questions). This part of the module aims to help participants internalise new information and knowledge they gain as well as to reflect on their learning process. In the final self-reflection, the participants demonstrated that they had made considerable progress with their foreign language(s) skills and many commented that they were inspired by topics they had learned about in the theoretical lectures.
The impact of this pilot module is likely best summed up by these participants’ thoughts about the module:
“I think that this module made me progress in all my languages, to some extent. I progressed in English by learning a new language through it, I progressed in German by gaining more confidence even though I had lost a lot of competences by not practicing it for a long time, and I definitely progressed in Lithuanian because I was completely new to that language 4 months ago”, shared one participant in their guided self-reflection.
And another participant wrote, “Overall, I feel inspired by my experience of completing this Arqus Multilingual Module and believe it to be the stepping stone to much more language learning in the future”.
The Arqus Plurilingual and Intercultural Hub plans to offer this module again in the autumn/winter semester 2025/26. It will be a second pilot phase and will be expanded to include several of the Arqus languages. Check back in September for more information.
