Studia Językoznawcze

The concept of plurilingual competence and the call for its systemic development have been present in the field of glottodidactics for over twenty-five years. Nevertheless, the practical implementation of these concepts still remains on the margin of teaching practice. The article discusses the evolution in the perception of language teaching – from the concept of multilingualism to an emphasis on fostering plurilingual and pluricultural competence. Key didactic concepts for cultivating this competence are introduced, including the “seven sieves” technique and the SMART model. The practical section of the article outlines methods for developing strategies that maximise an individual’s linguistic potential. Additionally, it presents examples of activities designed to achieve this goal. The presented solutions were tailored for beginners learning Polish as a foreign language, and the methods of solving the proposed tasks serve as illustrations for the theses and proposals stated in the article. The factors influencing the effectiveness of interlingual inferencing and the ability to build knowledge about the grammatical system of a new language using provided cues are also addressed in relation to the conducted study. Plurilingual competence is a highly individualized construct dependent on the knowledge of other foreign languages, metacognitive awareness, and previous educational experiences, which underlines the importance of integrating activities enhancing this competence within language teaching, including in the context of Polish glottodidactics.