Developing the child's multilingualism: the concept of concurrent foreign language learning at the Mały Poliglota Children's University

The author of this paper provides a detailed discussion on the idea of teaching foreign languages to children and youth in the aspect of developing bi- and multilingualism. The main aim of this article is to present the concept of concurrent foreign language learning that has been pursued by the Mały Poliglota Children’s University at the Faculty of Philology at the University of Szczecin (Poland) since 2012. The article involves a description of the concept of the Mały Poliglota Children’s University with due account of the latest research in the field of language education and guidelines of modern language policy (in the European Union and in Poland). The paper presents methodological solutions which have been applied and the obtained implementation results. Moreover, the author refers to the specificity of teaching in a unique region of Poland, namely, West Pomerania, a border area, and discusses local conditions that affect the suggested foreign language teaching offer. The main idea of the creators of the Mały Poliglota Children’s University is to promote and develop the child’s and young people’s multilingualism by allowing them to participate in regular professional language classes organized at a higher education institution, conducted by well-qualified language instructors – academic teachers, and implemented based on the original curricula. The project concept covers concurrent teaching of two foreign languages supported by cultural and general development activities. Educational offer of Mały Poliglota currently involves the following language groups: English and Russian, German and Spanish, and Norwegian and Italian. This offer not only makes the Mały Poliglota Children’s University stand out in the market of language classes for the youngest in Szczecin but is also unique in Poland. The described principles are currently implemented as part of the Mały Poliglota Children’s University project, co-financed by the European Union with the funds of the European Social Fund (project no. POWR.03.01.00-00-U032/17).