Universität Graz

Erasmus+ BIP „Multimodal and plurilingual methods for language eduation"

The Erasmus+ Blended Intensive Programme (BIP) aims to develop the necessary skills for teaching Italian as a foreign and second language.

Presentation of Prof. Bartoli Kucher during the Erasmus+ BIP at Uni Graz (May 2024)

Objectives

The aim of the transnational (Austria-Italy-Slovenia) and interdisciplinary teams (language didactics, transcultural and multimodal literature didactics, film didactics and intercultural literary studies) is to identify and critically reflect on the necessary skills for global citizenship education. Building on this, the students (foreign language teachers in training) will be enabled to independently develop materials for multilingual and multicultural foreign language classes in Austrian, Slovenian and Italian schools. Participants learn about current methods of foreign language and multilingual teaching, which they can productively combine with their projects and final theses. The particular added value comes from the critical examination of different research traditions and their application in linguistically and culturally diverse and heterogeneous teaching and learning groups. In 2024 in Graz, the project focused on the use of transcultural and multimodal texts that are situated at the interface of cultures and languages, as well as on authors whose work was or is determined by the need to share their own experiences and promote encounters with the other. The experience of otherness, of boundaries and multiple affiliations unfolds in literary and media exchanges and transfers, as well as in individual dialogues, which in turn generate knowledge.

Background

In culturally heterogeneous and mobile societies, which are characterised by complex intermediality, but also by migration conflicts, intertextual networks of multimodal and plurilingual texts offer a promising option for acquiring all or most of the necessary skills that characterise and enable language education and language awareness, both in terms of learning and teaching a foreign language – in this case, Italian as a foreign and second language. In this way, the diverse relationships between spoken language and other semiotic forms of language, such as images or language materials linked to film sequences, comics, etc., can be operationally linked and utilised at the didactic level.

(Implemented) Activities

Workshops, group work, language landscape, cooperative and digital presentations, visits to locations and institutions (TV, radio) to experience dimensions of diversity and boundaries in an innovative way and to learn about and reflect on them analytically and contrastively.

Results

Under the guidance of their lecturers, students from the three universities worked in mixed groups to prepare multimodal and multilingual materials for a publication. After the end of the face-to-face phase in 2024, the work was continued online in mixed groups until the end of the year, with comments from the lecturers, and was also implemented in a few selected school classes in the first months of the 2024/2025 school year. In April 2025, the materials for heterogeneous Italian classes were published in open access (https://doi.org/10.25364/513.2025.1). On 16 May 2025, the publication ‘Un mare di storie tra immagini, lingue e culture’ was presented (see https://radiocapodistria.rtvslo.si/podcasts/punto-e-a-capo/106615709/ 175131866 and https://fhs.upr.si/un-mare-di-storie-immagini-lingue-e-culture-morje-zgodb-med-podobami-jeziki-in-kulturami/). In addition, digital materials (podcasts, padlets, etc.) were created, which will soon be made available.

Lessons learned

The programme, which took place for the first time in 2024 at the University of Graz under the coordination of Prof. Simona Bartoli-Kucher and Professors Nives Zudič Antonič and Antonella Benucci, was coordinated in 2025 by Prof. Nives Zudič Antonič from the University of Primorska (Koper/Capodistria) and supported by Professors Bartoli-Kucher and Carla Bagna. It will continue in Siena in 2026. At the administrative level, early clarification of roles and good communication facilitate cooperation between the international relations offices involved.

Presentation of the BIP partner university

Group works of the Erasmus+ BIP students

Further links