As a university with students from a broad range of backgrounds, we can proudly claim that Westminster is one of the most linguistically diverse universities in the UK. We wish to celebrate this by gaining a better understanding of the variety of languages and dialects spoken by our students.
The combination of students from across the UK’s linguistically diverse communities, our international students and our many colleagues from around the world point to Westminster being one of the most linguistically diverse universities in the UK. However, in order to measure this and put Westminser on the map as a ‘Multilingual University’, we need to know more about which languages and indeed dialects people are able to use to some extent.
The survey
We know that people are more multilingual than they think – try our short survey to find out!
Background
More than 300 different languages are now spoken in London schools. And in England, over 20% of primary school children use English as an additional language. This equates to over 900,000 children for whom English is not their first language and who are therefore multilingual! But how many languages do we have in our University of Westminster community?
Employers are constantly in need of people able to communicate in a wide range of languages – not just the ones commonly taught in schools, but also other languages from different parts of the globe. Having other languages - whether you have learnt just a little in school or on holiday, grown up speaking them, can speak but not write, read but not speak, or have a high level of competence - is something to be proud of. It opens our minds to different ways of living and cultures. The capacity to move between languages demonstrates flexible thinking and creativity.
Add to this the medically proven fact that knowing more than one language benefits the brain and can slow down the development of dementia and being multilingual is a win-win situation.
Celebrating our multilingualism and sharing our survey results
We plan to launch the results of our survey at the World in Westminster Festival from 15 to 17 March 2022. We will include a multilingual exhibition and other events, such as a performance of multilingual poetry, to celebrate our linguistic diversity.
We want you to be proud of your/our multilingualism and to know that your languages are welcome in our University. Languages are a big part of our identities, so we want them to be seen and heard – and valued.
Further Information
Some useful websites about the importance of languages:
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