The quest of paths to multilingualism and multiculturalism within the framework of the Eurocomprehension conception

The paper isdevoted to the peculiarities of the EuroComRom language project developed with the aim to achieve multilingualism on the basis ofRomance languages within the framework of the Eurocomprehension conception. Research in the field of European multilingualism onthe basis of the three main language families in Europe - Romance, Slav and German, began at the initiative of a group of German linguistsin the 90s of the 20th century, and led to the development of a language project that in 1999 received the European LanguageLabel for an innovative language project. The most development from the three EuroCom projects was received by the EuroComRomproject aimed at achieving multilingualism in the Romance group of languages on the basis of the French language, the most studiedlanguage of this group. The project resulted in the publication of a textbook for speakers of the German language and a software productin the form of a multimedia aid. The approach the Seven Sieves, which is the result of the completion of the EuroComRom researchproject, allows achieving receptive multilingual competences in Romance languages. The paper presents an analysis of the main theoreticalargumentation about a possibility of developing a multilingual competences in a group of related languages by activating thealready existing but unused knowledge, and the peculiarities of the Seven Sieves approach developed within the framework of the Eurocomprehensionconception with the chief aim of the Council of Europe language policy, that is, achieving individual plurilingual andpluricultural competences. EuroCom organizes and subdivides the search for and recognizing interlexemes and identical syntactic structuresin the studied languages into seven sections, or seven sieves, starting with the first sieve sifting out international vocabulary,which is common for most of the European languages. The authors of the seven sieves project state that after a course of multilingualtraining in acquiring receptive competences in a group of related languages it is expedient to continue studying the given languages withthe aim to achieve productive competences. Next, the paper considers other language projects in the field of multilingual education inline with the Eurocomprehension conception, including EuroCom and a number of projects based on other approaches and methodologyto achieve plurilingual competence. The main contribution of all these projects to multilingual teaching and learning is in the growth ofintercultural and interlingual awareness of the linguistic diversity, rather than acquiring any language skills. Summing up, the papernotes that the quest of ways to European multilingualism and preservation of linguistic and cultural diversity in the process of constructinga multilingual society takes place under the conditions of the growth of the use of the English language as the chief means of commonEuropean interlingual and intercultural communication, and a conclusion is made that the domination of English in the globalisedworld only strengthens the need for measures to preserve national languages and cultures performing the function of the ethnoculturalidentity, which is possible only in case of purposeful policy of multilingualism.

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