Multilingualism

Educational institutions in Germany have, without exception, dealings with multilingualism. The aim of education is to learn to deal with it productively.

Multilingualism - an everyday and multifaceted pattern in our world

Children and young people speak different languages and dialects in their families. They traverse different language curricula. The relations that individuals have with their languages are multifaceted. A broad spectrum of language experiences and practices have entered the conventional 'mother tongue'/foreign language (of the school) dichotomy: children who grow up using two languages equally; family languages that are overtaken by a second language; foreign languages that are used for communication purposes; dialects that are closely related to the standard variety; minority languages that are consciously maintained and cultivated; heritage languages that are renewed or revitalised later on; words and phrases from migrant languages that come into use in German. Those who occupy multilingual worlds develop attitudes towards and ways of coping with this - whether they are defensive or accepting, simplistic or exaggerated, negative or positive, indifferent to or conscious of use and development. Furthermore, speakers who have been socialised monolingually encounter multilingual worlds. They, too, cannot help but develop attitudes to other languages and particular habits for dealing with them.

Coordinated multilingual education

The advantages of a coordinated multilingual education can accrue well beyond just educational institutions. The conventional monolingual approach to instruction in schools should be breached, either through the occasional or systematic use of other languages, with preference for those languages that are spoken by those in the class. This can occur through interdisciplinary projects (with language as an element), readings in other languages, efforts to translate, by creating language awareness or by directly comparing languages.