Mačianskienė, N. (2013). Internationalisation at home: development of individual language constellations at tertiary education // ICERI 2013 [eresource]: 6th International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation, 18-20 November, 2013, Seville, Spain: ICERI2013 proceedings. Spain: IATED, 2013, ISBN 9788461638475, p.p. 183-191. [Conference Proceedings Citation Index]. INTERNATIONALISATION AT HOME: DEVELOPMENT OF INDIVIDUAL LANGUAGE CONSTELLATIONS AT TERTIARY EDUCATION Nemira Macianskiene Vytautas Magnus University (LITHUANIA) Abstract In this article internationalisation at home is discussed from an unconventional angle: the research focuses on plurilingual competence acquisition and development at a higher education institution as one of the possible aspects of internationalisation at home. Language learning is a lifelong process, however, it is often insufficiently supported at higher education level, as the focus here is on acquiring competencies of the major and minor study fields and the opportunities for non-linguistic students to develop their language competencies are rarely provided. Language constellations here refer to individual language profiles of a plurilingual learner, i.e. the number of further languages studied after the first foreign or second language and language configurations the students’ plurilingual language competence consists or has been formed of. The research presents the analysis of the relationship between the field of study, gender, achievement in the first foreign language and the choice of subsequent languages. The data recorded in the diploma supplements of the three cohorts of Vytautas Magnus University (VMU) first cycle graduates of 2008 (n=806), 2010 (n=793) and 2011 (n=789) on the development of plurilingual language competence during the four years of undergraduate studies at the university served as the main statistical source for statistical analysis. The language constellations formed by VMU first cycle students were analysed comparing them with regard to the fields of study aiming at identifying the patterns for the choice of language to study for compulsory and optional integrative or instrumental purposes. The research revealed significant differences between the numbers of languages studied among the students of different fields of study; no statistically significant differences were found with regard to the type of language constellations and fields of study. The research concludes that providing opportunities for students at tertiary level to develop their plurilingual competence expands the boundaries of internationalisation at home. Keywords: internationalisation at home, plurilingual competence development, formation of language constellations, language configurations. 1 INTRODUCTION Internationalisation of higher education (hereinafter HI) usually manifests itself in numbers of incoming and outgoing students participating in various exchange programmes, staff mobility, participation in international conferences, partnerships with universities of outside the country, collaborating in research performed with overseas colleagues, designing joint programmes through which participants, who undergo the process of internationalisation, acquire knowledge about different cultures, learn to better understand different ways of life, to communicate with diverse cultures and become more aware of the diverse world we live in. In this study we focus our attention to a different aspect or type of internationalisation, i.e. development of cross-cultural awareness without moving from one’s own country, namely, internationalisation at home. This phenomenon will be researched from a theoretical point of view, conceptualising the idea of internationalisation at home and then presenting an empirical study into plurilingual competence development at Vytautas Magnus University (hereinafter VMU), Lithuania, as practical manifestation of one aspect of internationalisation at home.