Multilingualism is an asset in an increasingly interconnected and linguistically diverse world. It promotes linguisticflexibility, cultural sensitivity and cognitive flexibility, as well as the ability to think from various perspectives. Alongsidethe dominance of English, multilingualism is prevalent in many workplaces within the globally operating tech sector. Amultilingual environment requires strategies and skills such as code-switching, transfer, and mediation.The Royal Institute of technology (KTH) at Stockholm, Sweden, offers an international learning environment with a largenumber of international students and academic staff. Furthermore, many students already are multilingual but may notbe prepared to use their multilingual competences in an academic or professional context. Enhancing andstrengthening student’s multilingual competences is an asset, also in the “Anglosphere”. Multilingualism opens doors toa broader professional network by bridging language and cultural barriers. It also enhances problem solving as diverselinguistic and cultural knowledge helps to develop innovative solutions and adapt to different contexts.The department of language and communication at KTH is constantly seeking new teaching and learning methods thatmeet the evolving needs of students and society. This development can entail shifting from more traditional “languagecourses” and offering other ways of learning and practicing languages through skill-based courses, project-basedcourses or workshops and challenge driven education. It implies also new formats of teaching and learning, as blendedlearning and teaching, flipped classroom and collaborative learning (COIL).In this presentation, we will describe our ongoing work with diversifying and renewing language teaching at KTH byintroducing a multilingual course. Our aim is to enhance students’ multilingual competences, preparing them to work inmultilingual, multidisciplinary and multicultural working environments.
QC 20240930