Four members of the YUFE Language Centres subgroup (WP3-LC) attended the 2022 CEL/ELC Forum on ‘Languages in European University Alliances: challenges and issues’: Christine Engelen, University of Antwerp (Belgium), Lauri Tolkki, University of Eastern Finland (Finland), Friederike Weiss, University of Bremen (Germany) and Joanna Wińska, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń (Poland). The conference was organised by a Faculty of Philology at the University of Sevilla on 1 and 2 December 2022 at the University of Sevilla, Spain.
The WP3-LC representatives gave two presentations on YUFE achievements: ‘The YUFE Language Star: Fostering multilingualism beyond the classroom’ (Engelen, Tolkki and Weiss) and ‘Let’s BIP! The application of a language Blended Intensive Programme (BIP) in a European university alliance on the example of YUFE’ (Wińska).
Regarding the BIP, which is organised by NCU University Language Centre this year, YUFE-WP3-LC also proves to be on the right track: several alliances encourage language learning through this new format and the conference offered a forum to discuss and develop best practices. The coordinator of the NCU BIP, Kamila Szczepanowska, followed the forum via live stream and she was encouraged by the opportunities for networking with other BIP coordinators.
Besides YUFE, there were representatives of several other alliances, among others, ATHENA, ULYSSEUS, Apatche, UNITA, SEA-EU, Arqus, EUTOPIA and UNA Europa. Several presentations mirrored our experiences with language offers like language cafés and tandems. And many of us agreed on the challenges we face when it comes to language programmes within our alliances, like scalability, time-consuming pilot projects, drop-out numbers, access to resources and the additional workload that most of us face when designing and implementing YUFE projects. We were also intrigued by projects using intercomprehension and alliances exploring the role of AI in language projects and tools.
author: Joanna Wińska
