Researchers from the universities of Cambridge and Bristol (United Kingdom), Wuppertal (Germany), Lund (Sweden), Montréal (Quebec), Valencia and Barcelona visited the Institut Escola Greda in Olot on Wednesday. The group is at the Faberllull residency this week to explore the prospects and challenges posed by language teaching and learning in a multilingual and digital world.

There were two parts to the centre visit. In the morning they saw first-hand how multilingualism is managed in classrooms. The centre has a high proportion of pupils aged 3 to 16 whose usual language is neither Catalan nor Spanish. To tackle this, several specific programmes have been developed and tailored to the students' situation. In the afternoon, the residents met with the school's teaching staff. The meeting served to exchange knowledge and answer questions from both sides on matters related to language learning.

Tomorrow, Thursday, the residents will visit the Olot Consortium for Language Normalisation and the Garrotxa School of Adult Education. Both centres teach Catalan to adults who do not know the language. The visit will familiarise the group with the methodologies used and the challenges faced in teaching a new language to adults.