The influences of a multilingual identity at the university

Abstract

The influences of the students’ multilingual identity in the process of Universidade Federal do Pampa internationalization is the main concern of this work. The discussion about the internationalization process of the universities is having an exponential growth in Brazil situating this work in which I analyze how students who already entered the university speaking more than one language may influence this process. The objective of this work is to analyze the academic life of the students who have a multilingual identity within the university. I also analyze possible advantages that a multilingual identity brings the students in their academic knowledge acquisition. A qualitative research is used to interview students from varied programs from Campus Bagé. The students reported their experiences with the English language not only in the academic environment, but also before they became academics. It is understood that multilingual students may help the internationalization process at UNIPAMPA, because being multilingual make them comfortable to publish academic works in English and/or to participate in English classes offered by the university. Therefore, multilingual students may put UNIPAMPA in the way of internationalization.