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SFU Multilingual Week

February 24 - March 1, 2025

Multilingual Week (MLW) is SFU’s annual global connection on campus: your opportunity to meet new people with whom you may share language and cultural connections. To hear from different language speakers and language experts. To find out how language knowledge sets you up for success in your life and career.

Message from the President

Multilingual Week transforms the SFU experience by engaging with the university’s multiplicity of language speakers and as we celebrate together. Multilingual Week is a time of collaboration and respect. Everyone is welcome. We look forward to seeing you there!

Multilingual SFU proactively fosters an inclusive environment, where everyone - regardless of their native languages - feels valued and heard. This festival is about highlighting the ubiquitous presence of multilingualism in the university and contributing to a more equitable and inclusive campus where everyone can thrive. 

2025 event schedule

Everything is free and everyone from the SFU community - students, faculty members, and staff - are invited to attend! All events occur at SFU's Burnaby campus unless noted otherwise.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 24

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 25

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 26

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28

SATURDAY, MARCH 1

FAQs

Need help finding event locations? Use SFU's Campus Maps + Directions webpage. Select your campus first, then type in the room number. You can also download the SFU Snap app; it has a room finder, too. Download for iOS and Android.

Messages from the organizers

"Multilingual SFU is a vibrant weeklong festival that brings together students, faculty, and staff to celebrate the myriad languages spoken at the university and in our surrounding community…When institutions prioritize and embrace multilingualism, they begin to dismantle language barriers that can otherwise impede full participation and understanding”.

-- Melek Ortabasi, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Programming in FASS, the organizer of Multilingual SFU 2024

"Language is a powerful form of symbolic capital, often employed to validate, include, or exclude cultural groups within social spaces. By celebrating plurilingualism through collaboration with departments, units, student groups, and professional organizations, we aim for Multilingual SFU to illuminate power dynamics and highlight the unique experiences, contributions, and challenges faced by multilingual speakers. Ultimately, we strive to foster greater intercultural understanding and empathy within our community."

-- Jia Fei, Interim Chair of World Languages and Literatures, the organizer of Multilingual SFU 2025

Connect with our Multilingual Week Partners

The Student Learning Commons SLC is a multilingual space at SFU 

The SLC provides support for SFU students' writing, learning, and speaking through consultations, workshops, and semester-long partnership programs.

In the SLC, we recognize that studying in English can be complex, especially for those who did not grow up thinking, speaking, and writing in that language. Having multiple languages to draw from can also support complex thinking and problem solving! What's more, multilingual students bring diverse perspectives and lived experiences that create richer conversations and deeper learning opportunities across SFU.

Students who want to practice their spoken English may be interested in our conversation pods and Conversation Partners programs.

Students who are getting creative with their languages are encourage to submit their writing to our annual SLC writing contest in the Plurilingual Prize category.

And all students are warmly invited to connect with us for our spring soup circle discussions.

Office of Francophone and Francophile Affairs (OFFA)

Did you know that SFU is the only university in British Columbia that offers a variety of courses and programs taught in French at the undergraduate and graduate levels? With the Office of Francophone and Francophile Affairs, SFU is committed to contributing to the growth and vitality of the Francophonie by establishing strong ties with the community and offering an unparalleled student experience for all Francophones and Francophiles. Learn more.

Please contact us if you would like to chat about how we can support you! Eilidh Singh eilidhs@sfu.ca and Amanda Wallace ajw23@sfu.ca

The Centre for Educational Excellence – EAL Consultants

CEE’s EAL Consultants work collaboratively within the unit and with key stakeholders across the university to provide EAL support to SFU’s multilingual community. Seeking to counterbalance the yet still prevailing deficit positioning of EAL students (both domestic and international) (Marshall, 2009) in mainstream disciplinary classes, our team, emphasizing asset-based approaches, works with individual instructors (as well as at the program level) to resolve pedagogical challenges to better meet the needs of multilingual students thus allowing them to ‘show what they know’ beyond the perceived impediment of language. To that end, we develop instructor-facing programming that foregrounds linguistically responsive pedagogy (LRP)— “...a pedagogical approach taken up by faculty in what have been traditionally considered monolingual settings with the aims of providing well-supported teaching and learning and equitable outcomes for multilingual learners” (Haan & Gallagher, 2021, p.3).

Haan, J., & Gallagher, C. (2021). Situating linguistically responsive instruction in higher education contexts: Foundations for pedagogical, curricular, and institutional support. TESOL Quarterly. Full Article

Marshall, S. (2009). Re-becoming ESL: multilingual university students and a deficit identity, Language and Education, 24(1), 41-56, DOI: 10.1080/09500780903194044

DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS (LING) | INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES PROGRAM (INLP)

The Department of Linguistics is committed to providing high quality scientific research into multilingualism, while also providing a learning and working environment that celebrates multilingualism. We believe that being multilingual is truly a superpower. Through our research initiatives, graduate studies program, and undergraduate program, we foster a cooperative and supportive spirit of collegiality for all of our students, staff, and faculty.

The Indigenous Languages Program (INLP) is housed by the Department of Linguistics. Our mission is the collective and individual empowerment of Indigenous peoples through education, using Indigenous knowledge systems, histories, ways of being, and learning. We partner with Indigenous speech communities and organizations to enable Indigenous language learning on-site within the communities. Since 1993, we have offered courses in more than 18 languages in British Columbia and Yukon.

Participating SFU units

We'd like to thank the SFU community for coming together to make this event happen. Without everyone's collaborative contributions, this "potluck" of an event couldn't have happened.

Thank you

We'd also like to extend the warmest and largest thank you to SFU's Centre for Educational Excellence (CEE) for birthing Multilingual SFU in 2022. CEE carried it through 2023, while FASS continued the work in 2024 before handing over programming to WLL for 2025. We recognize that multilingualism is a superpower of a great population of the university - students, faculty members, and staff - and this is something to celebrate every week of the year. We appreciate the support and enthusiasm shared by everyone at the university to take the time to commemorate the importance of multilingualism.

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