Language Diversity Seen from the Perspective of Preparatory Year Programmes
Language Diversity Seen from the Perspective of Preparatory Year Programmes

Summary/Abstract: AbstractIn this paper, we aimed to shed light on how preparatory year programmes for foreign languages capitalize on the multilingual competences of participating students. More specifically, we examined the way in which students enrolled in a preparatory year programme for foreign languages may resort to multilingual competences to facilitate learning of a new language which, in turn, facilitates integration in a foreign education and labour market.Firstly, we briefly touched upon the benefits of multilingualism and multiculturalism. Within the background of the increased globalized world of the 21st century, multicultural and multilingual skills represent a pathway to successful integration of people from all over the globe who have been moving (more or less) freely to pursue their personal and professional goals, to explore opportunities for their development and enhanced satisfaction of ever more complex needs. These skills can be developed by one’s active involvement in learning languages, with the latter seen as instruments for acquiring complex knowledge of the target culture. When learning and using a language, we become aware not only of its morphological and syntactic structures but also of the realities and abstract representations encoded by it. Hence, the more languages one comes to be proficient in, the more complex one’s understanding of the world, as seen through as many lenses as languages mastered and used to glimpse at the world. Against this background, the European Union has embraced linguistic diversity as “[o]ne of the cornerstones of the European project.” Several studies have highlighted the way in which mastery of several languages contributes to people’s successful integration in the societies they choose to study and work in. Secondly, we pointed to the existence of several types of preparatory or foundation year programmes in Europe – and pointed to the fact that they may be used to provide training in languages and/or basic knowledge in a certain field that may be chosen for further education. There are (at least) two types of study programmes known as ‘foundation year programmes’ or ‘preparatory year programmes’. On the one hand, there are preparatory year programmes designed to equip future students with basic knowledge in a certain field so that they may pursue a Bachelor’s degree programme in the respective field); on the other hand, there are preparatory year programmes designed to teach aspiring students the language of the country where they wish to attend Bachelor’s/ Master’s/ Doctoral study programmes. In our paper, we focused only on the preparatory year programmes of the second type and provided a few examples of such preparatory year programmes.Thirdly, we focused on the Preparatory Year of Romanian Language for Foreign Citizens organized by the Bucharest University of Economic Studies (ASE), Romania, a programme which we referred to as APLR ASE. This programme was authorized in 2014 and accredited in 2017. In the period 20142019, APLR ASE enrolled more than 320 students from more than 30 countries across the globe. We described the diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds of participants, the languages used in the teaching process, the opportunities for graduates’ insertion in the Romanian education and labour markets. We illustrated how these diverse backgrounds, which require the use of several languages during instruction, facilitate understanding not only of Romanian linguistic, cultural, and professional realities, but also of those of participants’ countries of origin. This, in turn, helps APLR ASE students better integrate in the Romanian education and labour markets, where not only mastery of (general and specialized) Romanian is required, but also mastery of other languages, as well as of intercultural and transversal competences (cf. Pătru et al., 2018, Dima, Mohanu et al., 2019, Mohanu et. al, 2019).As a conclusion, we expressed our firm belief that preparatory year programmes may contribute to the formation and development of multilingual individuals, equipped with: (foreign) language skills, a variety of intercultural skills, and a set of attitudes that are conducive to their inclusion on the education and labour markets of the destination countries, as well as to their active participation in society.

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