This paper offers an overview of the major events and trends in the field of polyglottery as a science (the study of consciously attained individual multilingualism) from 2010 to 2021 with special attention to its implications for language education and its connections with geolinguistics (understood as global or geographically specified sociolinguistics in the tradition of the American Society of Geolinguistics). Mentioned are, among other things, the milestone academic conferences in New York, Tokyo and Moscow, the creation of the first organized polyglot group in East Asia, and the first graduation papers on polyglottery defended for a bachelor’s degree in linguistics. An attempt is made to put these research results and ideas in general scientific context

Although knowledge of foreign languages is now becoming increasingly necessary, language education in most parts of the world (with few exceptions) seems to be rather inefficient. This paper attempts to define the most common problems of general language instruction and their possible solutions. In the first part, linguistic, psychological, methodological and external factors affecting the learning process are singled out. In the second part, it is discussed how these problems could be solved and some practical measures are proposed.

The current paper elaborates on the effects of introducing elements of personalized education in the academic tutoring programme realized at the University of Gdańsk (in short UG, Poland). It begins with an outline of the key objectives of the project called Ideal Quality in Good Quantity, which was introduced at the University of Gdansk in the years 2014–2016. The programme originally aimed at equipping academic teachers with tools suitable for implementing elements of individualized didactics. Moreover, the project assumed a practical application of the aforementioned tools in scholarly work of the tutors who realized their own tutoring sessions with students representing various fields of study (philological, pedagogical and culture studies, to mention some of them). The project’s initial conception, i.e. Ideal quality in good quantity, is continued forward in the so-called Centrum Tutorów UG as well as in the form of faculties’ internal initiatives. In the paper the reader will find a description of fragments of individualized didactic work implemented in teaching French and German as foreign languages and psychology.

This paper examines the methodological and cross-cultural aspects implemented in the British textbooks of Russian, Colloquial Russian: the Complete Course for Beginners and Colloquial Russian 2: the Next Step in Language Learning, and in the two volumes of the Russian textbook of English, Angliiskiy Shag za Shagom (English Step by Step). The article presents their structure, advantages and disadvantages. By way of conclusion, the author gives some considerations concerning the development of high-quality textbooks of foreign languages, and demonstrates a personally designed sample lesson.

The article describes the study of Hebrew by Alexander Arguelles, one of the outstanding polyglots of our time. The monitoring results demonstrate that the polyglot himself is not always aware of his effective strategies of learning the language. For example, the active use of sensory-motor input of new language information was identified as one of the unconscious language acquisition strategies.

This paper is based on the experience gained while transcribing the audio recording of the round table discussion on polyglottery and education held at the international conference Multilingual Proficiency: Language, Polyglossia and Polyglottery (New York City, 2013). The discussion covered such topics as the definitions of a polyglot, the measurement of language knowledge, the phenomenon of switching languages in speech and the implementation of polyglots’ experience in language education systems. A summary of the discussion is provided, the key ideas of the participants are pointed out, and some personal observations on the matter are shared, including the difficulties confronted during the process of transcription.

This paper examines the main approaches to mastering the skills of oral speech as presented in the talks of the Polyglot Gathering 2018 in Bratislava. The purpose of the study was to analyze polyglots’ practical observations on the subject available in the video recordings of their presentations at the Gathering. It is demonstrated that many polyglots emphasize the importance of spoken skills and suggest the principles of natural acquisition, positive emotions and consistency as study guidelines.

This paper discusses the author’s first encounter with the Japanese language at the age of 23 and documents his continuing response to it up to the present time. At first, the language learning methodology he had used before failed and proved to be inappropriate for learning Japanese. Then came the realization that learning a foreign language needs some previous knowledge to build on. The search for the most efficient way to master Japanese brought the author to receptive multilingualism, which by chance opens up new vistas for the aspiring learner to improve listening skills. The physicality of speech and the consequent importance of some form of outside stimulation for its development are discussed. Mention is made of how he came upon the idea of adapting childhood techniques in learning how to read to the acquisition of reading competence in the Japanese language. In connection with this, the author makes another digression on the relationship he perceives as existing between active and passive language skills, and from this proceeds with the mention of how this might be applicable to his progress to date in learning Japanese and why, for better or worse, this would not normally apply to classroom acquisition of Japanese either inside or outside of Japan today

Russian is one of the languages which are learnt in Germany at any educational level. Though today it has lost its positions in the rate of foreign languages chosen by the Germans, there are many interesting projects and initiatives supporting and maintaining the status of the Russian language in Germany. In this paper, I am going to give an overview of the history of cultural relations between Russia and Germany, try to explain the reasons of the current situation and describe the perspectives of the Russian language in today’s Germany. By way of examples, I will discuss such events and projects as “To4ka-Treff”, “RussoMobil” and the activities of the Russian culture centers in Germany, as well as programs in Russian as a foreign language at schools and universities in Germany.

This paper seeks to give in a concise manner a holistic characterization of English, French, German and Russian, revealing at the same time the types of thinking (or thought patterns) involving these languages. The four languages are characterized respectively as being experiential/pragmatic, rational/ dualistic, idealistic, and antithetical. Based on these observations, some suggestions as to the pedagogy of foreign languages are also made.

Transcribed by Stepan Kulakov

Edited by Grigory Kazakov & Tatiana Ivushkina