Challenges and opportunities of teaching languages in multilingual and multicultural classroom of higher education

Abstract

Today’s higher education institutions have become multilingual and multicultural as a consequence of modern-day globalization. Studying in a host country as an exchange student or a free mover may be an interesting but a challenging endeavor altogether. Researchers of internationalization of higher education envisage a plethora of difficulties that students and teachers working and studying in the multilingual and multicultural learning space encounter, which may range from linguistic, psychological, cultural, educational to even personal ones (Lauridsen & Lilemose, 2015). The study aimed to identify the challenges that visiting students face studying in a foreign environment in a host country by investigating the plurilingual profile of research respondents to determine the scope of multilingual and multicultural factors that should be taken into account by the host institution; then the students’ psychological barriers, the challenges caused by different educational culture of the host institution, issues of foreign students’ integration into the host university community were analyzed. Quantitative (questionnaire survey, descriptive and comparative analysis) and qualitative (semi-structured interviews) research methods were used.