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On 16th <\/sup>March 2022, The Cam\u00f5es Institute’s Centro de L\u00edngua Portuguesa em S\u00e3o Tom\u00e9 organized a roundtable to discuss the opportunities and challenges of multilingualism in S\u00e3o Tom\u00e9 and Pr\u00edncipe, as well as the relationship that can be established with formal teaching and learning of the Portuguese Language.<\/p>\n The topics discussed at the event included the preservation of local creoles; the opportunity for multilingualism as a factor of cognitive development and social progress; the state of Portuguese language teaching; and the importance of mastering it as an instrument of citizenship and democratic participation.<\/p>\n The panel was attended by S\u00e3o Tom\u00e9an specialists in Linguistics, Sociolinguistics and creoles: Abigail Tiny Cosme, professor at the Faculty of Sciences and Technologies (FCT), Researcher at the University of Lisbon and Coordinator of the IILP for S\u00e3o Tom\u00e9 and Pr\u00edncipe; Caustrino Alcantara;\u00a0the writer Frederico Gustavo dos Anjos; and the Coordinator of the Department of Languages \u200b\u200bat FCT, Beatriz Afonso. It also included Elebrak Costa, a recent graduate in Portuguese who won the 1st prize for his graduation thesis in the 1st IILP\/Itamaraty contest for scientific articles on the Portuguese language, moderated by Guilherme Figueiredo, CICL Reader in S\u00e3o Tom\u00e9. Teachers of primary, secondary and university education and undergraduate students in Portuguese were also present.<\/p>\n The event also included the participation of the group Leji-tela (roots of the earth), whose members presented a moment of dialogue themselves and the public using the various mother tongues spoken in the country: Portuguese, Santome, Angola and Lungu’ie.<\/p>\n