Language Centres at a Crossroads

Plurilingual courses include two or more languages as their subject and communication is their core competence. The aim of the courses is to provide various plurilingual skills required in international workplaces today and in the future. Common challenges in multilingual situations comprise plurilingual practices such as switching fluently between languages, using code-switching or language mediation for word-finding difficulties and interlinguistic transfer for comprehension tasks. All these are skills that students experience as a risky challenge, which we have examined more closely in two recent studies.

In order to determine this challenge more precisely, we used a multi-method approach to collect data (recording and analysis of a multilingual conversation and evaluation of learning portfolios) from the trilingual course "Plurilingual Business Communication" with English, Swedish, and German. In a group work, students verbalize subject information in three languages and employ plurilingual practises like language alternation, code-switching and code-mixing. The comments made by the students give an indication about the problems they experience, how they cope with them and according to which attitudes they act.

A second study was made in a plurilingual course which contained both inside and outside classroom teaching with seminars followed by a study trip to Switzerland. Students were given guided open questions without beforehand preparation after tasks done in the classroom. During the study trip, students were asked to observe their emotions every day and to reflect on them in their learning portfolios. The participants also discussed their emotions in group interviews. We were able to gather information on linguistic awareness and experienced emotions in demanding multilingual settings from these, both spontaneous and pondered, answers.

Based on the results from these two studies, we will be able to adjust the didactical progression and develop new content and exercises in our different multilingual courses. The collected data also help to take into account the use of emotional intelligence in creating foreign language courses for academic and professional purposes.

The presentation is multilingual with a continuous strand in English.

---

Plurilinguale Kurse umfassen zwei oder mehr Sprachen und zielen auf plurilinguale Kommunikationskompetenz für internationale Tätigkeiten mit u.a. Sprachenwechsel und Sprachenmittlung. Diese Fähigkeiten werden von Studierenden als riskante Herausforderung erlebt.
Anhand von Aufnahmen und Studierendenkommentaren aus den Kursen "Plurilinguale Geschäftskommunikation (Englisch, Schwedisch, Deutsch)" und "Plurilinguale Studienreise (Deutsch, Französisch)" untersuchen wir die erlebten Schwierigkeiten und Emotionen. Die Forschungsergebnisse helfen, die Herausforderungen gezielter zu trainieren und emotionale Intelligenz bei der (Weiter-)Entwicklung der Kurse zu berücksichtigen.

---

Les cours plurilingues contiennent deux langues ou plus et ciblent la compétence de communication où le changement de langues et la médiation sont essentiels. Nous avons fait deux études sur ces compétences que les étudiants éprouvent comme des défis risqués.
Les données viennent des cours « Communication des affaires plurilingue » (anglais, suédois, allemand) et « Voyage d'étude plurilingue » (allemand, français). Les commentaires des étudiants sur les difficultés et les émotions forment le corpus dont les résultats sur la conscience langagière et l'intelligence émotionnelle aideront dans le développement des cours.

---

References:

• Schlabach, Joachim (2016): Plurilingual proficiency as a learning objective for a multilingual curriculum in the study of business in Finland. Language Learning in Higher Education 6: 2, 495–507. DOI 10.1515/cercles-2016-0027.
• Schlabach, Joachim; Boström, Eeva (2011): Plurilingualismus als Herausforderung: Über einen deutsch-französischen Pilotkurs an der Wirtschaftsuniversität Turku / Finnland – Le plurilinguisme comme défi: Rapport d'un cours pilote allemand-francais à l'École supérieure de commerce de Turku / Finlande. In: Baur, Rupprecht S.; Hufeisen, Britta (toim.): "Vieles ist sehr ähnlich", Individuelle und gesellschaftliche Mehrsprachigkeit als bildungspolitische Aufgabe. Schneider Verlag Hohengehren, Baltmannsweiler, 175–199. www.utu.fi/tse-multilingual

---

Joachim Schlabach is a lecturer for German language and business communication at the University of Turku / Finland as well as a research assistant in the field of linguistics - multilingualism at the TU Darmstadt / Germany. His research and teaching focuses on multilingualism didactics with the aspects of plurilingual courses and plurilingual whole school policy.

Eeva Boström is a lecturer for French language and business communication at the University of Turku, Finland. She also teaches in plurilingual courses since 2007.