Professor Patrick Rebuschat, Director of the Camões Institute Chair for Multilingualism and Diversity, and Sophie Bennett, a PhD researcher in Linguistics at Lancaster, visited Lancaster Girls' Grammar School (LGGS) on 24 September 2026 to speak with Year 9 students during the school's International Week.

They led a session for around 140 Year 9 students and their teachers. Ahead of the visit, the students had sent in their own questions about languages, and the short presentation was built around them, followed by a lively and interactive question-and-answer session.

The session set out to show students that multilingualism is far more common, and far more within reach, than they might think. Drawing on research from linguistics and cognitive science, Professor Rebuschat and Sophie Bennett explained how language learning begins before birth and continues across the lifespan, why everyone is already multilingual in some way, and what really helps a new language grow. With many pupils about to choose their GCSE options, the talk made the case for keeping a language going, whether French, Spanish, German, or a language spoken at home.

The students' questions, both those submitted in advance and those raised on the day, ranged from how many languages a person can learn to whether we think and dream differently in different languages, and made for a fascinating discussion.

Professor Patrick Rebuschat, Camões Institute Chair for Multilingualism and Diversity, said: "It was a real pleasure to spend the morning with 140 curious and sharp Year 9 students. The truth is that most young people are already multilingual in some way, whether through a language they speak at home or a foreign language they meet at school. It is never too late to build on that, and we wanted them to leave knowing that choosing a language is one of the best investments they can make, in their brains, their futures, and their connections with other people."

Professor Rebuschat and Sophie Bennett thank Katherine Norman, Head of Modern Foreign Languages at LGGS, for the invitation, and the Year 9 students and the wider LGGS community for their warm welcome.

The visit formed part of the public engagement activities of the Camões Institute Chair for Multilingualism and Diversity, which promotes research on multilingualism and raises awareness of the benefits of speaking more than one language, in schools, families, and society more broadly. Sophie Bennett's doctoral research, on individual differences in bilingualism, is carried out in partnership with the Camões Institute.