The Institute of Foreign Languages of Vytautas Magnus University (VMU IFL), in cooperation with the Language Teachers’ Association of Lithuania, organizes the 6th International Scientific Conference “Sustainable Multilingualism” (Lith. Darnioji daugiakalbystė). The Conference will be held online on June 4-5, 2021. Abstracts are submitted by April 1.

The importance of Sustainable Multilingualism

“Sustainable multilingualism is the process of ensuring the harmonious coexistence of languages in a country, city or institution and human consciousness. It is the education of a multilingual person who, through learning the home language and other languages and his/her intercultural experience, develops and improves his/her general communicative competence. This competence allows improving mother tongue, communicating in several languages, understanding, comprehending the written or spoken text of other languages, and mediating with others who do not speak a common language. The future belongs to multilingual people who have general communicative competence in several languages and are able to use those languages flexibly,” says VMU IFL Prof. Dr. Nemira Mačianskienė, Chair of the Scientific Committee of “Sustainable Multilingualism”.

VMU IFL organized the first Conference dedicated to multilingualism in 2011. The aim was to contribute to the development of language policy in the country by providing a platform for researchers and language teaching practitioners to discuss the development of multilingualism, i.e. aspects of language preservation and language teaching and learning.

A Wide Range of Conference Themes

“Sustainable Multilingualism 2021” aims at bringing together researchers, language policymakers, language teaching professionals and students, and all the interested in the discussion on preserving and nurturing multilingualism. As the Conference will be held online this year, researchers from all over the world are invited to present their research and insights on the following topics (in English, Spanish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, French, Russian and German):

• Language policy implementation (regional, national, institutional levels)

• Language preservation, revitalization, linguistic human rights
• Less widely spoken & taught languages
• Minority & regional languages
• Psycholinguistic perspectives of multilingualism
• Contemporary Lithuanian language studies
• Issues in translation and interpreting
• Virtual language teaching & learning
• Innovations in classroom language teaching and learning
• Plurilingual approach to language teaching & learning
• Linguistically sensitive teaching
• Content and Language Integrated Learning
• Intercultural communication in language teaching and learning
• Teaching and learning mediation competences
• Formative assessment
• Language teacher professional competence development

Keynote Speeches Will Be Delivered by World-Famous Scholars

The conference “Sustainable Multilingualism” always receives attention from world-famous scholars and multilingualism specialists. This year’s plenary speeches in English, German and Lithuanian will be given by Ghil’ Ad Zuckermann, Professor at the University of Adelaide (Australia), Britta Hufeisen from Darmstadt Technical University (Germany), Déirdre Kirwan from Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) and VMU IFL Latin Lecturer, Sigitas Lūžys, the winner of the Martynas Mažvydas Prize. The keynote speakers will present their latest research on the challenges of language teaching and learning as well as translation and the future of a multilingual world.

Submission of abstracts and registration takes place on the conference website.