Presenter: Nelli Mehlmann
Affiliation: University of Bremen, Germany
Chosen format: Presentation
Abstract:
Based on the understanding that languages are cognitively not strictly separated from each other, but form “[…] a communicative competence to which all knowledge and experience of language contributes […]” (Council of Europe 2001: 4), the European language policy suggests to incorporate the learners’ plurilingualism into language learning processes (e.g. Kommission der Europäischen Gemeinschaften 2003: 10). By doing so, synergies between languages can be used to make the learning process in the target language more efficient. Furthermore, the integration of the learners’ plurilingualism is seen as a tool to foster language awareness, language learning motivation and to valorise the students’ linguistic and cultural backgrounds (e.g. Dausend & Lohe 2016). Despite these potentials, studies indicate that teachers in German schools only rarely use the leaners’ plurilingualism as a resource in everyday teaching practice (e.g. Heyder & Schädlich 2015, Jakisch 2015, Bredthauer & Engfer 2018). Related to this, there exists only little empirical research in the German context on how learners actually experience the incorporation of other languages in class and to what extent the aforementioned potentials unfold.
This state is addressed by a dissertation project carried out in the field of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) at the University of Bremen, Germany. On classroom level, the project aims at systematically incorporating the learners’ linguistic repertoires into the EFL-classroom through the construction and conduction of a plurilingual teaching unit that encourages the students to use all their available languages. On research level, the project empirically explores how this incorporation is experienced by the learners using an explorative-interpretative approach. The presentation focuses on the first aim of the study and gives an insight into the plurilingual teaching unit as well as experiences gained from its implementation in two classes of a German secondary school.
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