Future Learn, the MOOC consortium, is offering a free 4-week online course (3 hours per week) entitled “Multilingual Practices: Tackling Challenges and Creating Opportunities“. The course has been developed by the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

It explores central aspects of multilingualism in today’s globalized societies, such as cognition, policies and education.

Specific course topics are:

• 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).

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.

No prior knowledge is required to take part in the course and the course leaders welcome anyone who is curious to know more about multilingual practices.

To find out more, see the Future Learn website.