The creation of a participatory, open, inclusive and efficient European university is the fundamental mission of the UNITA Universitas Montium project, in which the West University of Timișoara is a member along with five other European universities. Thus, one of the guidelines of the project is the development of multilingualism through the practice of intercomprehension, which allows the facilitation of exchanges and communication between the actors of the academic network (students, teaching staff, administrative staff).
The promotion of activities specific to intercomprehension that take place in the UNITA alliance took place in September, with the participation of Ms. lect. Dr. Ana-Maria Radu-Pop and Prof. Dr. Gabriel Bărdășan at the International Congress PluEnPli 2021, organized by Universidade Federal do Paraná, Brazil, with communication Intercompreensão para avándantes "estudantes": elements of interaction in the formation of trainers. In the course of the event, both the method itself, as experienced in the course held in Turin, and the status of the Romanian language among the Romance languages were thus debated.
Under the sign of intercomprehension, there were also several events held at the Western University of Timișoara. In the broader context of openness to multidisciplinarity and plurilingualism, with the aim of promoting UNITA's opportunities, the 2021-2022 academic year was inaugurated with a series of unique activities aimed at UVT students and socio-economic partners. The meetings were an excellent opportunity for the participants to discover strategies through which any speaker of the Romanian language can capitalize on their linguistic, cultural, behavioral, etc. knowledge and experiences. which he possesses, in order to communicate, in writing or orally, with native speakers of French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, even if he has not studied these languages.
For the first-year students of the Western University of Timișoara, the initiation workshops in intercomprehension took place both in physical format, on 23.09.2021, and in online format, on 24.09.2021, as part of the Initiation Week, and for the socio-economic partners, the meeting took place online, on 27.09.2021. The workshops were supported by Mrs. lect. Ana-Maria Radu-Pop, Ph.D., by Dr. Ramona Malița, Ph.D., and by Mr. Ph.D. Gabriel Bărdășan, teaching staff of the Faculty of Letters, History and Theology.
The workshops had an attractive and dynamic format, with a strong practical character, the brief presentation of the specifics of the intercomprehension method being followed by engaging exercises for receiving written and oral messages in Romance languages such as Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan and Romansh. The participants were pleasantly surprised by the novelty of the method, the generous scope of applicability and the opportunities for multilingual communication that it offers.
The communication skills modeled with the help of this method will be able to be exploited in an international academic environment, through study mobility, through joint projects with the UVT partners in the UNITA alliance, to which will be added the individual communication experiences in a multilingual context.
