Multilingualism and the teaching of foreign languages: Prerequisites, Didactic Concepts, Suggestions for Implementation

SPEAKER: PROF. MARIANNE HEPP

The presence of multilingual students with diverse cultural backgrounds calls for a new understanding of language teaching and learning. When used under the most appropriate conditions, multilingualism in the minds of learners is a valuable resource that can facilitate language teaching.

The lecture introduces a definition of multilingualism and discusses the particularities of language teaching at university level. Didactic approaches to multilingualism will be presented using the example of tertiary education. Language approaches will be discussed using the example of the instruction of German as a foreign language after English.

Marianne Hepp is Full Professor of German Linguistics at the University of Pisa, Italy. Her main research interests are text-linguistic approaches to second and multilingual language acquisition (with a focus on English-German intercomprehension), German morphology and word formation, typological connections between everyday and literary texts. Since January 2025 she has been Director of the University's Language…