Multilingualism and intercultural awareness - virtual reality or immersive experience?

The starting point of the author’s contribution is her research and knowledge of contact areas that are characterised by historical circumstances and social peculiarities – the basis for the cross-linguistic and intercultural coexistence of the people who inhabit them. In this complexity of social conditions, the cultural and political value of languages is not a static feature for the author, but an achievement of historically and socially rooted practises of speakers, including discursive practises that give languages recognisable sign values and allow them to circulate in recognisable trajectories. Innovative solutions for language learning and use are necessary and required to successfully preserve multilingualism and linguistic diversity in these areas and to create intercultural understanding in time and space.They should develop composite abilities and skills that, in addition to multilingualism itself, promote critical and humanistic thinking, tolerance and heuristic curiosity, which are essential for survival in a global world. Globalisation, the technological revolution and, as a result, artificial intelligence have brought about new approaches to language teaching in the field of foreign and other language learning, based above all on the fact that it is no longer the place and tools of learning that are important, but the shortest path to knowledge. It is becoming increasingly important that curricula and teaching resources to enable us to learn flexibly, from anywhere, at any time and in any way. A comprehensive reflection on new approaches to educational and didactic culture that enables effective cross-linguistic and intercultural communication in both analogue and digital environments, opens the way to strategies that reject the utopian ideas of unnecessary living contact with language, but put into practice the laws of interpersonal communication, prevent the degradation of the diversity of cultures and enable the preservation of the humanist paradigm of our civilisation.