The XVII CercleS International Conference 2022 is open to teachers, students, and all relevant stakeholders in language education. The conference looks into the future of language education in a world that is increasingly becoming more and more digital. The conference was held under the title “The Future of Language Education: In an Increasingly Digital World Embracing Change”. Over 270 participants presented using five languages mostly in person, but also some few online. The variety of intensive seminars or workshops were attended by university educators and administration, with several other European alliances attending, as well.
The heads of Work Package 2 “Mobility and Multilingualism” Claudia Boes from HHU Düsseldorf (Germany) and Anna Krukiewicz-Gacek from AGH University of Science and Technology (Poland), as well as the research assistant responsible for Multilingualism, Sonja Bretschneider, presented the European Higher Education Alliance UNIVERSEH in general and reported on how the Multilingualism work group had overcome intercultural challenges and how the process of creating the Multilingualism guidelines for non-language courses and the language course framework had progressed. Their seminar was grouped with other seminars under the title “Internationalisation and Intercultural Competence: Cross-border Cooperation or Interaction”. More than 30 interested attendees from language centres were among the audience and the response was very positive.
During the conference, the WP2 Multilingualism-team members, who were present, exchanged views and opinions on eTandems, internationalisation, certification and gamification. The language centre leaders present at the conference also decided to initiate future collaborations at national and international levels to exchange ideas about European Alliances and how to overcome various challenges language centres are encountering in the post-Covid era.
