The present research has been conducted during the implementation of interuniversity Master’s programme “Educational treatment of diversity” (Gento, 2006; Maslo, Kiegelman, Huber, 2008) at the University of Latvia in 2008-2009. Its topicality is determined by ever-increasing flow of information. The exchange of information does not take place only in a single country, but wide co-operation among the countries in different fields, including education, exists (Lūka, 2008). In this process language is a means of acquiring information and creating new knowledge. The research question is how language use changes when the study materials are offered in three different languages, one of them (Spanish) being totally or almost unknown to students; how each student’s language use system changes in the studies and which pedagogical treatments support this process. The research objectives are to analyze which opportunities using study materials in several languages improve the general competency and how it changes in the three dimension reality: experience, self-feeling and social recognition (Reich, 2005). The conceptual framework of the research is based on meta-language approach (Jessner, 2008) for the use of more than two languages in the studies and current state of the research of Latvian scientists in EU plurilingual project (1999-2002) (Hufeisen, Neuner, 2003; Kruze, Mortag, Schulz, 2007). So far such investigations in the higher education of Latvia have not been conducted. Students construct new knowledge on the reflection of information in different languages. It is important to use several languages in order to improve their general competence in the work with texts in several languages. Language competence is not the objective of the program but it is one of general competencies which is used to get information from the texts in different languages (Gento, 2006) and it is a means for activities (Baacke, 1998) and acquiring of scientific information . Languages form the space for the results in the studies and successful language use depends on the real situation and experience, self-feeling and social recognition. And from these dimensions every student constructs their own language use system. Thus the experience to use many languages in new situations helps the student to involve into the common European higher education space (BFUG, 2008) and international studies are the natural transformative environment. In such a way students can gain experience how to react in unknown situations and change the language barrier into the means of gaining new opportunities and advantages (Adler, 1922, 1926).

Methodological approach of Differences-in-differences estimation (Hanushek, Wossman, 2006) has been used in the study, which stresses the study of an individual’s learning outcomes. This study is oriented towards the revealing of differences in interaction structures of quality of learning outcomes and effectiveness of use of more than two languages in higher education. A sequential qualitative-quantitative research has been used (Tashakkori, Teddlie, 2003; Mayring, Huber, Gurtler, 2007). The study consists of the following stages: quantitative and qualitative data processing of e-platform; estimation of individual differences; data analysis and interpretation. The intentional cluster sample to target the whole group that covers the field was composed. It consisted of 21 student of the master’s programme “Educational treatment of diversity” studying at University of Latvia. Qualitative data processing has been done implementing AQUAD 6 software (Huber, Gürtler, 2004) and quantitative data processing – implementing SPSS 16.0 software. Finally data interpretation was done (Kogler, 2007).

• The use of many languages in the studies is effective if it provides student’s personal experience, self-feeling and social recognition as conditions for creation of new knowledge. • Facing the difficulties to deal with the subject content, students may be stressed but they also gain different experience how to react in unknown situations and thus the language barrier changes into the means of gaining different new opportunities and advantages. • Irrespective of differences in initial language competence and different combination of languages, language using shock may become an effective means of acquiring social experience providing support for students (students’ group, tutor and educator’s role) has been created in order to develop versatile reading strategies in foreign languages which results in changed self-feeling regarding the language barrier and helps to perceive social recognition in multilingual situations, thus overcoming barrier of language use.