Search

Since the earliest studies on multilingual advantages, it has proved difficult to disentangle language development from general cognition. It remains unclear whether language interdependence is an independent variable or whether observable effects are mediated by cognitive ability. Measurable effects of one language on another typically go hand in hand with differences in cognitive ability. We hypothesise that high cognitive ability produces stronger language interdependence effects than low cognitive ability. We consider this problem in the context of heritage bilingualism in Germany comparing a linguistically mixed cohort of bilingual students (n = 557; i.e. Russian-German, n = 237; Turkish-German, n = 320) with a monolingual German control (n = 852) regarding their proficiencies in the foreign language English. We ask whether the bilingual students manifest an English development that is different from their monolingually socialised peers. We place the students in three different groups depending on their performance in a visual-spatial cognitive ability test. We fit structural equation models to test whether heritage language and German proficiency impact English proficiency differently across these groups while additionally controlling for language background and socio-economic status. Results reveal differences between the high cognitive ability groups, here interpreted as a conditioned bilingualism effect.

The cognitive advantage (CA) hypothesis claims that multilingualism promotes the development of several basic cognitive capacities. A large number of empirical findings support this hypothesis, but recently there have also been numerous contradictory findings and methodological objections. The present paper extends the investigation of possible cognitive advantages from basic cognitive (executive) functions to broader cognitive competencies such as cognitive flexibility. A promising candidate for this is 'flexibility of goal adjustment' (FGA), a capacity of developmental regulation that solves problems through flexible adaptation processes. In a study with N = 119 monolingual and multilingual adults we found the predicted positive correlation between multilingualism and FGA. However, the mediator function of executive capacities entailed in the CA hypothesis operationalised as Stroop and flanker tasks could not be demonstrated.

This study investigates the use of overt and null subjects in Bulgarian in child heritage speakers with L2 German. The alternation of overt and null pronominal subjects in null-subject languages like Bulgarian depends on grammatical and discourse conditions and contrasts with German. Oral narratives were elicited in Bulgarian, comparing the performance of the heritage children to that of monolingual children and adults. Overall 68 Bulgarian narratives of 39 speakers were analysed as to the use of overt and null pronominal subjects in topic-continuity and topic-shift contexts. The results reveal similar subject realisation for all speakers, supporting early acquisition of null-subject grammars. Analyses of topic-continuity and -shift contexts showed similar overall patterns in children's and adults' subject use, with children producing somewhat more overt subjects in topic-continuity and ambiguous overt pronouns in topic-shift contexts than adults. However, the bilinguals used significantly more ambiguous null subjects than monolinguals. These results suggest that fine-grained discourse constraints of null-subject grammars are more difficult for bilinguals to acquire and maintain. The near adult-like performance of the bilinguals in some contexts can be attributed to the fact that most of them were Bulgarian-dominant and received non-attrited parental input. Differences are also attributable to cross-linguistic influence.

Heritage language (HL) speakers seem to diverge from monolingual speakers in the acquisition of syntax-discourse interface phenomena. However, most of the studies reporting this finding do not make any distinction between different types of syntax-discourse interface structures. Therefore, it is an open question whether these structures are difficult for HL speakers across the board or whether different types of structures are associated with different acquisition outcomes. In this study, we investigate whether the timing of the acquisition of syntax-discourse interface structures among monolingual children affects their acquisition by HL children. We consider the acquisition of the alternation between preverbal and postverbal subjects with unaccusative, unergative and transitive verbs in Italian. This alternation involves the syntax-discourse interface across all verb types. However, mastery of this alternation has a different timing in monolingual acquisition depending on the verb type: it emerges earlier in association with unaccusative verbs than unergative and transitive ones. We elicit narratives in Italian from 42 Italian heritage children living in Germany and ranging in age from 7 to 14 years. We focus on the analysis of preverbal and postverbal subjects, considering the effect of verb type and discourse status of the subject. The children show a good mastery of the alternation between preverbal and postverbal subjects with unaccusative verbs, whereas they exhibit difficulties with the same alternation in association with transitive and unergative verbs. Furthermore, postverbal subjects with transitive verbs are particularly vulnerable to cross-linguistic effects from German. The results of the study suggest a gradient interpretation of heritage speakers' difficulty with syntax-discourse interface structures, with timing in monolingual acquisition being a relevant factor that modulates the degree of this difficulty. The results are not affected by children's dominance of exposure to Italian or age.

Research on assessing English as a foreign language (EFL) development has been growing recently. However, empirical evidence from longitudinal analyses based on substantial samples is still needed. In such settings, tests for measuring language development must meet high standards of test quality such as validity, reliability, and objectivity, as well as allow for valid interpretations of change scores, requiring longitudinal measurement invariance. The current study has a methodological focus and aims to examine the measurement invariance of a C-test used to assess EFL development in monolingual and bilingual secondary school students (n = 1956) in Germany. We apply longitudinal confirmatory factor analysis to test invariance hypotheses and obtain proficiency estimates comparable over time. As a result, we achieve residual longitudinal measurement invariance. Furthermore, our analyses support the appropriateness of altering texts in a longitudinal C-test design, which allows for the anchoring of texts between waves to establish comparability of the measurements over time using the information of the repeated texts to estimate the change in the test scores. If used in such a design, a C-test provides reliable, valid, and efficient measures for EFL development in secondary education in bilingual and monolingual students in Germany.

Non-word repetition tasks are widely used to assess phonological short-term memory (PSTM). Results of previous research on the performance of monolingual and bilingual children in PSTM tasks are inconclusive. Although in some studies bilinguals did outperform monolinguals in the repetition of non-words, most studies reported comparatively weak results of bilingual children, especially when they were tested in their L2. In this study, four-year-old monolingual and bilingual children acquiring German (N = 1,441) were tested with both German-based (GBNW) and quasi-universal non-words (QUNW). It was hypothesized that bilinguals would outperform monolinguals both in (a) GBNW under the condition of comparable German language skills and (b) QUNW without any preconditions because QUNW do not presuppose a good command of German. Bilinguals yielded significantly lower results in GBNW, but not in QUNW. After the exclusion of children with limited German language skills from both groups, bilinguals outperformed monolinguals in both tasks, especially in QUNW. It can be assumed that bilingualism puts higher demands on PSTM than monolingualism and thus contributes to its faster development. Unnecessary medical examinations and therapies that are sometimes prescribed to bilinguals due to a poor performance in German-based PSTM tasks can be avoided if QUNW are used instead of language-specific items.

How do teachers deal with multilingual pupils, and what reasons govern these choices? Whereas most studies on this topic have examined teachers in schools with monolingual policies, this paper includes teachers at bilingual schools. Framed by pedagogical theory, we present a qualitative research study based on interviews with teachers in the German state North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). This area constitutes an interesting research site since 30-50% of the children are multilingual, but language policies in schools differ: Whereas most schools have a monolingual orientation, bilingual schools aim to purposely integrate languages beyond German in regular classes. Our results show that despite the differences in school language policies, despite different professional biographies and independent of knowledge on multilingual upbringings, teachers in mono- as well as bilingual schools reproduce the unquestioned perception of a monolingual norm. Furthermore, teachers at bilingual schools focusing on European languages deem migration-induced multilingualism as even less important than do teachers at regular schools. Finally, the results underline the importance of institutional policies and allow for insights into individual logic. On a larger horizon, the study contributes to issues of language-responsible teaching, equal opportunities, educational equality and social cohesion.

Studies on Family Language Policy state that the shape of family multilingualism is embedded in diverse conditions within and outside the family, like historical, social and political factors, which influence family language practices. In this regard, the monolingual orientation of early childhood education (ECE) institutions in many European nation states is in tension with dynamic family multilingualism, thereby constituting a potentially conflict-prone relationship. In this article, we would like to illustrate this with regard to language policy in ECE institutions in Germany, drawing on empirical data from a new teaching research project on Family Language Policy of multilingual, (newly) migrated and/or refugee families. Our analyses reveal that parents are aware of selection in education based on language as well as a hierarchical language order. Family language practices are shaped against the background of the prevailing language policy in ECE institutions.

Empirical evidence exists that enhancing students' language can promote the mathematics learning of multilingual students at risk, whereas other target groups (e.g., monolingual students, successful students, both with diverse academic language proficiency) have hardly been considered. This cluster-randomized controlled trial (N = 589) investigates differential effects for these extended target groups, comparing two language-responsive interventions (with or without vocabulary work) and a control group. The regression analysis reveals that all students significantly deepened their conceptual understanding in both interventions. Unlike what was anticipated, multilingual students' growth of conceptual understanding had no significant additional benefit from integrated vocabulary work. These findings call for promoting language-responsive mathematics instruction for all students and for using a discursive rather than a vocabulary focus.

Family Language Policy never takes place only in private but is embedded in larger discourses in society or rather in several societies to which the multilingual family is linked. One main point of contact of families and discourses on language is the education system. Previous research has shown that bilingual families orient towards teachers for advice on their language policies and tend to adopt the schools' view on languages. This especially applies to families, in which three or more languages are spoken. In this article, I will present the results from a case study with two highly multilingual families in Germany and the parents' orientation to the education system. Findings show that in the case of the two families, teachers do not have extensive direct influence. Instead, the main impact that the education system has on the families' language policy is indirect by conveying and enforcing mainstream language ideologies and supporting high prestige languages such as English and French, while the parents constantly try to anticipate potential expectations by stakeholders in the education system.

Can early childhood education (ECE) support the societal language development of children from linguistically diverse backgrounds? This study examined how existing variation in classroom interaction quality (CLASS Pre-K), classroom composition (percentages of children from low-income backgrounds and dual language learners [DLLs]), and duration of attending German ECE were related to language trajectories from 30 to 73 months of age (n = 519 children in 154 classrooms). DLL status served as a focal moderator and parental education was considered as an additional moderator. Age-based growth models revealed interactions between DLL status and ECE characteristics. There were numerous intercept effects that endured over the age span studied. Interaction quality (emotional support) and classroom composition (percentage of DLLs) were related only to DLLs' German language growth. Parental education did not moderate ECE effects. Hence, the observed range of variation in German ECE may matter for DLLs' societal language development but may be of less relevance for monolingual children.

The article focuses on whether and to which extent heritage bilinguals make use of their heritage language while developing receptive skills in unknown languages which are either related to the majority language or the heritage language. Thirty four adolescent heritage speakers of Russian and Polish and a control group of thirty three German monolinguals were first exposed to a text in Swedish. The monolingual control group was matched with regard to age, educational background, foreign languages learned at school as well as proficiency in English. All participants had to determine the parts of speech of ten items from the text, translate them into German, and extract the main pieces of information from the text. In a second step, the heritage speakers completed a similar task with an unknown Slavic target language (Serbian). The results revealed no bilingual advantage of the heritage speakers over the monolinguals in the Swedish task. Furthermore, they scored lower in the Serbian trial. We treat this as evidence that access to the heritage language as a resource for solving these tasks is limited compared to the majority language and English which might be due to lesser metalinguistic knowledge about structures of the heritage language.

Foreign language learners frequently use words from their previously acquired language(s) in the target language, especially if these languages are related (Ringbom, Håkan. 2001. Lexical transfer in L3 production. In Jasone Cenoz, Britta Hufeisen & Ulrike Jessner (eds.), "Cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition: Psycholinguistic perspectives," 59-68. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters). Such insertions are referred to as 'lexical transfer', commonly divided into 'transfer of form' and 'transfer of meaning' (Bardel, Camilla. 2015. Lexical cross-linguistic influence in third language development." In Hagen Peukert (ed.), "Transfer effects in multilingual language development, 111-128. Amsterdam: John Benjamins; Ringbom, Håkan. 2001. Lexical transfer in L3 production. In Jasone Cenoz, Britta Hufeisen & Ulrike Jessner (eds.), "Cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition: Psycholinguistic perspectives," 59-68. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters). Lexical transfer challenges the monolingual habitus prevailing in foreign language classes which requires students to rely exclusively on the target language and inhibit other influences. Thus, in such English classes, students should avoid the use of different languages and ideally only produce monolingual English output. In this context, the current study investigates the use of lexical transfer instances in short English texts written by bilingual (Russian/Turkish-German) and monolingual (German) secondary school students (initially attending year 7) from a longitudinal perspective. It assesses i) whether the students increasingly adhere to the imposed normative rules and ii) what influence background variables such as language background (mono- vs. bilingual), type of school (higher vs. lower academic track), gender (female vs. male), or age (four measurement points over a period of 2.5 years) exert on the use of lexical transfer instances. Apart from gender, all factors impact lexical transfer in a statistically significant way, evoking different norm-based explanations.

Public education systems in Europe were created in the course of the foundation of the 'classical' nation state in the 18th and 19th centuries. Historical analyses show that it was part of their destiny to contribute to the consolidation of the respective states' national self-design. In the 19th century, the myth developed that a nation state is monolingual not by its creation but 'by mere nature', and that monolingualism in the national language is the 'natural' result of being born and growing up in a nation state. Many of today's public education systems are still based on this notion of linguistic 'normality' with respect to the composition of their clientele as well as their image of an individual 'normal' child(hood). However, the populations of nation states are in fact multilingual. Linguistic diversity increased as a result of migration and factors such as technical means for virtually 'borderless' communication. My contribution presents the European traditions of nation building since the late 1700s and asks for the functionality of monolingual habitual practice in education systems today. First results from an empirical study are presented which illustrate individual language abilities of multilingual children and the potential of linguistic diversity as a resource.

In recent years, the issue of using bilingual education has come to the public's attention. A widespread belief is that students in bilingual classes achieve a higher competence in the language, but that they lag behind in subject-specific knowledge when compared to fellow students in traditional (i.e. monolingual) classroom settings. Nevertheless, by evaluating knowledge gain in a short teaching unit, previous studies have shown that bilingual students rarely experience drawbacks. Although there are a variety of different opinions, the present study aims at detecting how subject-specific knowledge is influenced by bilingual biology lessons. The study was conducted at a grammar school in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, with 13- and 14-year-old students. To assess differences in students' knowledge gain, test and control groups were used, in which students were taught 12 identical biology lessons in a bilingual and a traditional classroom. The unit consisted of basic characteristics seen in (social) insects. Both classes took a knowledge test before and after the unit. We hypothesised that there would be a higher increase in knowledge for the bilingual class compared to the monolingual class. Results suggested a slightly higher knowledge gain in bilingual students, but no significant differences were revealed.

This study examines cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in the acquisition of embedded "wh"-questions in L3 English in German-dominant heritage speakers (HSs) of Italian. Specifically, we investigate whether a higher proficiency in the heritage language Italian increases the potential for CLI from that language. To this end, 21 adult-aged Italian-German early bilinguals and 32 monolingual controls (L1 speakers of Italian, German, or English) completed an acceptability judgement task that tested the acquisition of embedded "wh"-questions in English (while also controlling for the acquisition of the relevant properties in German and Italian). Language dominance was assessed using a yes/no vocabulary test and a proficiency index based on various aspects of self-reported language use and proficiency. Our results suggest that syntactic CLI occurs from both languages and that this is unrelated to overall dominance in German or proficiency in Italian.

This paper investigates the relationship between multilingualism, code-switching, target language contact and pragmatic and grammatical awareness in learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). Participants (N = 144) were university students enrolled in English language courses at a German university. The study employed a cross-sectional design with degree of multilingualism, frequency of code-switching and intensity of target language contact as between-subject factors. The linguistic measure of pragmatic and grammatical awareness was a written appropriateness and accuracy judgement test involving three speech acts: apologies, refusals and requests. In addition, participants completed two questionnaires assessing their language background, code-switching behaviour and the intensity of their contact with the English language. Regression analyses revealed that degree of multilingualism was a strong positive predictor of pragmatic awareness in an EFL learning environment. Frequent code-switching appeared to enhance pragmatic awareness in those participants who grew up with two languages, but not those who were monolingual in childhood and became bilingual through education. Moreover, the results demonstrated that intensity of target language contact emerged as the only predictor of both pragmatic and grammatical awareness in this study.

This study investigated the vocabulary development of children (N = 547) from linguistically and socioeconomically diverse classrooms in Germany from age 3 in preschool to age 7 in Grade 1. The results showed that for dual language learners (DLLs, n = 107) growth rates in their German majority language skills varied over classrooms. Compared to monolingual children, DLLs improved faster in classrooms with higher peer-level skills in the majority language than DLLs in classrooms with lower peer-level skills (controlling for socioeconomic status and classroom quality). DLLs showed stronger growth dynamics than monolingual children during later preschool stages. The findings highlight the role of preschool peers in DLLs' acquisition of the majority language before entering elementary school.

This article takes the plurilingual repertoires of foreign language teachers -- and thus the teachers' linguistic diversity -- as a starting point for exploratory research into the potential of visual methods in teacher education for changing mind-sets. Describing and reflecting on the ubiquitous manifestation of a monolingual habitus in foreign language (teacher) education, we consider ways to offer linguistically responsive foreign language teacher education aiming at challenging that ethos. Reporting on a project based on the production of drawings, we present and compare the linguistic biographies of future French and Spanish teachers, using multimodal analysis. The analysis seeks to uncover whether target language (French and Spanish) and migrant background influence the visual representation of the plurilingual repertoire and of the process of becoming plurilingual. As no significant differences are observed, demonstrating the pervasiveness of the monolingual mind-set in foreign language learning and teacher education, I propose some ways forward in response to the identified language learning ideologies.

Purpose: From a psycholinguistic perspective, the quality of the stored word form in the phonological input lexicon, as well as its effective retrieval from the phonological output lexicon, is of great importance in lexical processing. This study aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of (a)typical word form processing in primary school children. In particular, age-related development and profiles of word form processing including children's response behavior were investigated. Method: A sample of 164 monolingual primary school children (6-9 years of age) was tested in a cross-sectional design using two word form-related tasks (auditory lexical decision and rapid naming) with carefully controlled stimuli in combination with traditional vocabulary tests and a nonword repetition task. Results: First, an age-related improvement (better performance and acceleration of reaction times) was found for both word form-related tasks. Second, a cluster analysis revealed five clusters with different profiles of word processing. Beside a cluster with overall results of above average, we found two clusters including children with typical lexical abilities who applied specific strategies to deal with the tasks (speed-accuracy trade-offs). Two other clusters represented weak lexical abilities at different levels of word processing. Conclusions: Children's abilities in word form processing develop over time and are characterized by developmental boosts that occur at different times in development. The uncovered profiles document patterns of (a)typical lexical processing. Since difficulties with word form processing are easily overlooked in clinical assessment, lexical decision and rapid naming tasks offer valuable tools for an in-depth evaluation of lexical skills.

Previous work has shown that heritage grammars are often simplified compared to their monolingual counterparts, especially in domains in which the societally-dominant language makes fewer distinctions than the heritage language. We investigated whether linguistic simplification extended to the anaphoric system of Turkish heritage speakers living in Germany. Whereas the Turkish monolingual grammar features a three-way distinction between reflexives ("kendi"), pronouns (o), and syntactically-unconstrained anaphors ("kendisi"), German only distinguishes between two categories, pronouns and reflexives. We examined whether heritage speakers simplified the Turkish anaphor system by assimilating the syntactically unconstrained anaphor "kendisi" to either of the two categories attested in the societally-dominant language, German. Speakers' sensitivity to grammatical distinctions in comprehension was assessed using an offline antecedent selection task and an online self-paced reading task. Our results showed that heritage speakers retain the three-way anaphoric distinctions of the monolingual grammar but there were also differences between the results of the offline and the online tasks. We suggest that processing paradigms are a useful complement to judgment tasks when studying how heritage speakers use grammatical distinctions involving optionality, as online measures can reveal distinctions that are allowed, even if dispreferred by comprehenders.

Academic language has been shown to significantly contribute to success across school subjects. However, to date, there are no empirical studies addressing its development across primary school age. The present study investigated the growth of academic vocabulary and influential conditions from Grades 2 to 4 based on a newly developed and validated test instrument. Drawing on a German sample of 472 children (N = 281 language minority learners) we found evidence of a "Matthew effect" with the group of language minority learners showing both lower initial level and lower growth rates compared to their monolingual peers. In addition, results of simple and full conditional growth curve models underline the significant impact of family background (parental education, books at home) and of children's nonverbal cognitive abilities on the intercept as well as the growth of academic vocabulary, thereby supporting the assumption of an additional Matthew effect according to family background, particularly in monolingual majority language children. Our results indicate the need for an early promotion of the register of academic language in monolingual as well as language minority students.

We report on a research project that develops and measures the efficacy of multilingual teaching approaches in the early English foreign language (FL) classroom in Germany. Although there is an abundance of programmatic calls for integrating minority and other languages the students speak in FL teaching, there are few materials and methods for systematic classroom implementation, let alone evidence of their efficacy in promoting FL achievement or in raising appreciation of minority languages and linguistic diversity. We review the findings of a precursor study that systematically identified linguistic and cognitive factors contributing to early FL achievement in a longitudinal study with 200 9- to 10-year-old monolingual and multilingual students in German primary schools who have had 3-4 years of English instruction. The results show that L1/minority language proficiency and metalinguistic awareness serve as significant predictors of English vocabulary and grammar skills in both monolingual German and bilingual EFL students. Against this backdrop, we designed a teaching approach that systematically integrates linguistic comparisons with minority languages and metalinguistic awareness tasks. We implemented the teaching approach with 128 4th grade learners in four primary schools who have had two 45-min English lessons per week since the beginning of grade 3. In a pre-post-test control study design, we assess linguistic, cognitive and attitudinal effects of multilingual FL teaching. In this paper, we outline the theoretical and empirical foundations of the multilingual teaching approach, illustrate it using representative examples and activities, review its implementation from a teacher perspective and report preliminary findings of its effects on FL development.

In this article, we present a qualitative investigation which was conducted as part of a project on school development in the field of multilingualism in Germany. In order to gain insight into the relationship between primary school teachers' language experience and their practice regarding the inclusion of pupils' home languages at school, ethnographic fieldwork was undertaken in three professional development sessions. In the three individual case studies chosen for analysis in this paper, we found clear indications of links between the participants' experiences with language, their language attitudes and their depictions of their pedagogical practice regarding migration-related multilingualism. The prevalence of different languages in the participants' everyday lives seemed to be closely linked to their willingness to include their pupils' home languages in their teaching. However, it would be overly simplistic to conclude that multilingual staff are better able than their monolingual peers to adapt their practice in this way. We observed that, above all, the participants' emotional associations with language and the meaning they attached to their experiences appeared to influence their perceptions of their ability to incorporate different languages into school life.

The present study aims at exploring: (a) the role of the educational setting in the acquisition of aspect and executive functions (i.e. updating) skills, (b) the acquisition of the aspectual features in Greek-German bilingual children and (c) the impact of updating on the acquisition of aspect. Imperfective aspect has been found to be acquired later than perfective in previous studies. Moreover, a bilingual educational setting seems to enhance not only cognitive but also linguistic abilities. The participants of the present study are Greek-German bilingual children, who attend a bilingual or a Greek dominant educational setting. They were tested in two baseline tasks, two linguistic tasks and an executive function, updating, task. The findings reveal that bilinguals who attend a monolingual educational setting performed similarly to the monolingual control group on aspect, whereas bilinguals who attend a bilingual educational setting scored lower than the monolinguals. In the updating task, the students of the bilingual educational setting scored higher than the other groups. Overall, our findings suggest that the bilingual educational setting seems to boost executive function (updating) skills, while the acquisition of aspect is affected by vocabulary knowledge.

There is a need to provide bilingual assessments and reference data to identify those who struggle to acquire their heritage language (L1) or the language spoken in the country of residence (L2). However, bilingual assessments and data are still sparse. Therefore, the aim was to use a tablet application to screen receptive vocabulary in different languages and discuss this data in the context of lexical acquisition theories. Forty-four monolingual German, 15 bilingual German-Polish and 21 German-Turkish-speaking children aged between 3;5 (3 years and 5 months) and 6;1 were assessed. All children completed the German version of the Receptive Vocabulary Screener (RVS), a tablet application testing 20 nouns and 20 verbs, and two standardized vocabulary sub-tests. Additionally, the bilingual children completed the Turkish or Polish version of the RVS. Internal consistency showed that the RVS is a reliable tool for research purposes and validity was confirmed by significant and moderate to strong correlations with the two standardized vocabulary sub-tests. Monolingual children outperformed bilingual children when performance comparisons were solely based on the German items. However, group differences were not significant when total vocabulary was used, i.e. the number of words bilingual children named across both versions. For bilingual children, L1 and L2 scores did not differ, i.e. they showed a similar performance on the L1/L2 subtest. Paternal education, but not maternal education, was significantly correlated to vocabulary scores. Children with more translation equivalents, i.e. words they know in both languages, and with a higher level of language proficiency showed higher scores on the screener. The app provided a valuable opportunity to assess lexical knowledge across different languages. Results indicated that total vocabulary and translation equivalents must be considered to evaluate bilingual children's lexical knowledge.

Existing studies on plural acquisition in German have relied on small samples and thus hardly deliver generalizable and differentiated results. Here, overgeneralizations of certain plural allomorphs and other tendencies in the acquisition of German plural markers are described on the basis of test data from 7,394 3- to 5-year-old monolingual German and bi/multilingual immigrant children tested with a modified, validated version of the Marburger Sprachscreening (MSS) language test and 476 children tested with the SETK 3-5 language test. Classified correct and wrong answers to MSS and SETK 3-5 plural items were compared. The acquisition patterns of immigrants corresponded to those of younger German children. Both monolingual German and immigrant children demonstrated generally the same universal frequency and phonetically/phonologically based error patterns, irrespective of their linguistic background, but with different tendencies such as overgeneralization of "-s" by German children only.

Normative-theoretical discourse in pedagogy calls for transformation in educational approaches towards multilingualism. The key question in multilingual education remains: Can language ideologies be transformed? The present paper investigates how the field of language awareness can contribute to this process and what practical changes and implemented transformation can be experienced within a learning environment where this change in beliefs has occurred. Based on an intervention in six German preschool institutions that have recently experienced new immigration, it presents a qualitative study with education professionals. The findings first reveal the prevailing monolingual sense in dealing with linguistic diversity. However, the results also illustrate that a change is possible, and allow deep insights into the transformation process. The key elements consist of professionalisation that allows educators to try new multilingual approaches in everyday practice and to raise their language awareness in the light of newly acquired knowledge and experience. This, however, requires an implementation of language awareness in regular teacher training and political measures that would make the topic compulsory for all professionals.

We examine whether German children attach an adultlike relevance to the pragmatic category of polarity contrast (e.g., "In my picture the child IS eating the candies" following after "In my picture the child is not eating the candies") with linguistic expressions (i.e., the affirmative particles "schon"/"doch"/"wohl" 'indeed' and accented auxiliary verbs, known as verum focus) that are frequent in adult speech. A picture-difference task with 4-6-year-olds and an adult control group shows that both groups mark polarity contrast with similar frequency but with strikingly different means: The adults produced verum focus; the children most often used particles. Moreover, the use of polarity-related expressions competes with structures that are never used by adults but are nevertheless adapted to the information structure context at hand. Overall, our findings suggest that from the repertoire of context-adapted solutions, children prefer structures that are conceptually and formally easier and maximally transparent.

While multilingualism itself is a widely analyzed topic, a study about multilingualism at German schools abroad is so far unique. This quantitative study investigates the differences in the size of German expressive and receptive vocabulary between monolingual and multilingual students, aged between 5 and 11 years. A cohort of 65 multilingual students with diverse linguistic backgrounds recruited from a German school abroad in The Hague, The Netherlands, was compared to a group of 880 monolingual students at schools within Germany. To test the children's vocabulary size, the "Wortschatz- und Wortfindungstest für 6- bis 10-Jährige" developed by Glück was administered. The study revealed partly significantly lower scores in the expressive vocabulary test for the multilingual students, as hypothesized by the researchers and detected in previous studies examining the difference between populations of multilingual and monolingual speakers of one particular language. In the receptive vocabulary test, the multilingual and monolingual students' scores did not differ significantly, a result consistent with findings in similar studies.

We elicited the production of various types of relative clauses in a group of German-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing controls in order to test the movement optionality account of grammatical difficulty in SLI. The results show that German-speaking children with SLI are impaired in relative clause production compared to typically developing children. The alternative structures that they produce consist of simple main clauses, as well as nominal and prepositional phrases produced in isolation, sometimes contextually appropriate, and sometimes not. Crucially for evaluating the movement optionality account, children with SLI produce very few instances of embedded clauses where the relative clause head noun is pronounced in situ; in fact, such responses are more common among the typically developing child controls. These results underscore the difficulty German-speaking children with SLI have with structures involving movement, but provide no specific support for the movement optionality account.

One of the first challenges facing the young language learner is the task of segmenting words from a natural language speech stream, without prior knowledge of how these words sound. Studies with younger children find that children find it easier to segment words from fluent speech when the words are presented in infant-directed speech, i.e., the kind of speech typically directed toward infants, compared to adult-directed speech. The current study examines whether infants continue to display similar differences in their segmentation of infant- and adult-directed speech later in development. We show that 16-month-old infants successfully segment words from a natural language speech stream presented in the adult-directed register and recognize these words later when presented in isolation. Furthermore, there were no differences in infants' ability to segment words from infant- and adult-directed speech at this age, although infants' success at segmenting words from adult-directed speech correlated with their vocabulary size.

Phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming (RAN), letter knowledge, and oral language are all significant predictors of successful literacy acquisition in several languages. However, their relative importance is less clear and depends on language characteristics, the specific aspect of literacy assessed, and the phase of literacy acquisition. This study, therefore, aimed to examine the development of these predictors and their relationship with literacy acquisition through a longitudinal investigation of German-speaking children. Seventy-eight children growing up monolingual German were assessed three times: a few months before starting school (mean age = 5 years 11 months), in grade 1 (mean age = 6 years 11 months), and in grade 2 (mean age = 7 years 10 months). Cognitive predictors were measured at preschool, and literacy outcomes (reading accuracy, speed, comprehension, and spelling) were measured in grades 1 and 2. Correlational and path analyses revealed a complex pattern of relationships between cognitive and literacy skills dependent on the aspect of literacy being measured and the timepoint. Overall, the most important predictor of literacy skill in grade 2 was earlier literacy skills, followed by letter knowledge and RAN. Phonological awareness was less important than RAN, and oral language skills (i.e., vocabulary, grammar comprehension) were least important. The implications of these findings for the understanding of cognitive mechanisms of literacy acquisition and for early detection of literacy difficulties are discussed.

We live in a time of unmatched global mobility and correspondingly, the number of U.S.-American students studying abroad continues to increase. For years now, applied linguists have displayed an increased interest in study abroad students' perspectives and desires about second language (L2) learning and use while abroad. Yet few studies have analyzed how these students' beliefs and desires are shaped by the broader discourses regarding monolingualism and diversity that surround them. This paper thus investigates the experiences of two U.S.-American students during their year abroad in Marburg Germany, considering the macro-level discourses regarding monolingualism and diversity that are perpetuated in the ways that they construct and negotiate desires about language and language learning at the micro level. The findings reveal that for his part, Brad's personal history catalyzed a micro-level process of reimagining himself in order to avoid being associated with an imagined community of monolingual and monocultural Americans. When he tried to re-negotiate these desires, however, he was only able to rely on macro-level discourses regarding monolingualism that were common in the twentieth century and are clearly still prevalent in the United States today (Pavlenko, 2002b). The results also show that David, who articulated a desire for total German immersion and German friends only, struggled when he relied on twentieth century discourses regarding monolingualism to construct beliefs about language and language learning. In both cases, these struggles caused Brad and David to begin negotiate their desires and re-orient to language and multilingualism. Taken together, both cases demonstrate that study abroad students find it difficult to construct a self that is in sync with its own subjectivities, language, and local surroundings at the micro level given societal and institutional discourses at the macro level that continuously challenge their identity work, including their beliefs, desires, and goals.

In large-scale assessment studies, language minority students typically obtain lower test scores in mathematics than native speakers. Although this performance difference was related to the linguistic complexity of test items in some studies, other studies did not find linguistically demanding math items to be disproportionally more difficult for language minority students than for native speakers. Furthermore, previous studies investigating the effectiveness of linguistic simplification of test items have yielded inconsistent results. We tested the impact of linguistic simplifications of mathematics test items in Germany with a specific focus on the role of academic language features included in the items. Specifically, we carried out a large-scale linguistic simplification study to test whether the performance gap between language minority students and German monolinguals is smaller when students are assessed with linguistically simplified items. We additionally determined whether students' socioeconomic status (SES) or their language proficiency moderate the effect of linguistic simplification. The study uses data from 17,738 fourth graders, 17% of whom sometimes or always spoke a language other than German at home. Although differences between language minority students and German monolinguals in mathematics achievement were related to differences in their language proficiency and SES, we found no significant main effects of linguistic simplification. Differential effects for language minority students emerged, however, when we took the moderator effects of SES and language proficiency into account, indicating that some language minority students may profit from linguistic simplification in elementary school.

In an event-related potential (ERP) study we investigated the role of age of acquisition (AoA) on the use of second language rhythmic properties during syntactic ambiguity resolution. Syntactically ambiguous sentences embedded in rhythmically regular and irregular contexts were presented to Turkish early and late second language (L2) learners of German and to German monolingual controls. Regarding rhythmic properties, Turkish is syllable-timed and prefers the iamb as its metric foot, while German is stress-timed, relying on the trochee. To utilize rhythm during the processing of syntactic ambiguity in L2, Turkish early and late L2 learners of German must master different rhythmic properties than in their first language. ERPs reveal a reduction in the P600 response to object-first sentences presented in rhythmically regular, but not in rhythmically irregular contexts for early learners and monolinguals only. No such effect was found for late L2 learners. Results indicate an interactive use of rhythmic information during the processing of syntactic ambiguity by monolinguals and early learners. Further, data from late L2 learners suggest that the acquisition of rhythmic properties may have to occur in a sensitive learning period.

This study examined lexical-phonological interactions in the first 50 words of a group of monolingual German- and Spanish-speaking children and bilingual German--Spanish children. The phonological characteristics of the earliest target word forms and output patterns of these children were analyzed to determine whether bilingual children select different target word forms and produce different output forms and templates than monolingual children. Results indicated that the target word forms selected by Spanish-speaking children differed from German-speaking children but not the target word forms of monolingual versus bilingual children. Output forms differed between monolingual German and Spanish children but did not differ greatly between the two languages of the bilingual children. The output patterns of bilingual children also differed from those of monolingual children. Bilingual children's earliest words contained more /l/s and variegated place and their templates were characterized by more mature phonological forms. These patterns were interpreted as being due to cross-linguistic interaction or to a more general effect of bilingualism, which leads to increased phonetic-phonological sophistication.

In the current study we investigate whether 2- and 3-year-old German children use intonation productively to mark the informational status of referents. Using a story-telling task, we compared children's and adults' intonational realization via pitch accent (H*, L* and de-accentuation) of New, Given, and Contrastive referents. Both children and adults distinguished these elements with different pitch accents. Adults, however, de-accented Given information much more often than the children, especially the younger children. Since a failure to de-accent Given information may be a characteristic of caregiver speech, in a second study we tested how caregivers talking to their young children realize Given and New referents. In this discourse situation, the caregivers quite often failed to de-accent Given information, raising the possibility that the younger children were simply reproducing the pitch accents they had heard adults using.

Academic language is frequently assumed to be especially challenging for students from families of low socioeconomic status (SES) and even more so for language-minority students. Due to their often especially disadvantaged position regarding socioeconomic background and exposure to the language of instruction, language minority students are considered to suffer from a double disadvantage when processing complex academic language. To test this assumption, the present study investigated the relationships between various academic language features and differential item functioning (DIF) in a reading comprehension test for language-minority students on the one hand and German monolingual students from low-SES families on the other hand. The analyses are based on data of 19,108 fourth-grade students who took part in the reading comprehension test of the German National Assessment Study in elementary school. Our findings indicate that both lexical and grammatical features of academic language correlate with DIF disfavoring language-minority students, with especially pronounced effects for long and complex words and average sentence length. For German monolingual students from low-SES families, fewer features were associated with DIF, and the correlations were generally smaller than for language-minority students. Findings are discussed in relation to the assumed double disadvantage of language-minority students in the comprehension of academic language.

Students from Turkish-speaking families are the largest minority language group in Germany. Yet, little is known about this group's literacy development. Using data from a 3-year longitudinal study, we examined whether the same base reading skills are involved in early reading comprehension of 100 Turkish-German bilingual and 69 German monolingual children. We applied a basic theoretical model of reading development to examine how emerging literacy develops for monolingual compared to bilingual children. Both the bilingual and monolingual children in this sample developed the investigated base reading skills at the same rate. However, the relations among phonological awareness, German vocabulary, and word decoding showed differential patterns in the development of German reading comprehension skills for the two groups: monolingual children appeared to make use of their phonological awareness skills more, whereas reading comprehension depended more on vocabulary skills for bilingual readers. Our findings indicate that bilingual emerging readers require specialized models of reading development to account for their unique routes into reading comprehension. The results of the study point to a need for increased attention to vocabulary building in the early phases of literacy acquisition for bilingual children.

Although Germany has experienced net in-migration for the past five decades, this fact has only recently been officially acknowledged. Furthermore, Germany is marked by a general monolingual self-concept very much attached to the idea of a nation-state with one homogeneous language. However, in large urban areas of Germany about 35 per cent of the population has a migration background, as has almost every second child enrolling in primary school. Hence the country is marked by this dichotomy between a monolingual policy discourse and a multilingual society, manifested in everyday life and, as a consequence, in educational institutions. The fact is that this political attitude towards Germany's own migration history and migrants has led to an educational gap between students with a migration background and their monolingual peers. In 2000, a project was started in Hamburg, aiming to overcome this educational gap and involving the creation of bilingual schools for some of the largest migrant languages. Bilingual classes were thus set up for the following language combinations: German-Portuguese, German-Italian, German-Spanish and German-Turkish, and were evaluated by the University of Hamburg. This paper reports on the model used and the specific school outcomes of the students attending these classes.

Based on an analysis of the speech of long-term emigres of German and Dutch origin, the present investigation discusses to what extent hesitation patterns in language attrition may be the result of the creation of an interlanguage system, on the one hand, or of language-internal attrition patterns on the other. We compare speech samples elicited by a film retelling task from German emigres in Canada (n = 52) and the Netherlands (n = 50) and from Dutch emigres in Canada (n = 45) to retellings produced by predominantly monolingual control groups in Germany (n = 53) and the Netherlands (n = 45). Findings show that the attriting groups overuse empty pauses, repetitions, and retractions, whereas the distribution of filled pauses appears to conform more closely to the second language norm. An investigation of the location at which disfluency markers appear within the sentence suggests that they are indicators of difficulties that the attriters experience largely in the context of lexical retrieval.

Bilingual German fourth-graders are expected to develop greater linguistic awareness than monolingual children and therefore should habitually apply different text-processing strategies compared with German monolingual fourth-graders when comprehending and recalling a text. Bilingual children are expected to process texts from the bottom up, from the text base to the gist, whereas monolingual children should engage in top-down processing, which is indicated, for example, by more text intrusions and inferences. This research attempts to clarify whether bilinguals show this shift in direction of processing when they process cross-linguistic versus mono-linguistic texts. The results of Experiment 1 supported our main hypothesis. Monolingual German fourth-graders had more intrusions than same-aged German-English (L1-L2) bilingual children. In Experiment 2, nearly balanced German-English and German-dominant children were tested separately in within-language free recall in both languages and in across-language text recall. For nearly balanced bilingual children, within- and cross-language recall was equally efficient in both languages but not for German-dominant bilingual children--in their recall, more intrusions appeared in their L2 recall. Top-down processing seems to increase when it is in the weaker language. Engaging in bottom-up processing apparently is associated with cognitive functioning in L1. (Contains 5 tables and 1 note.)

The development of native-like memory traces for foreign phonemes can be measured by using the Mismatch Negativity (MMN), a component of the auditory event-related potential. Previous studies have shown that the MMN is sensitive to changes in neural organization depending on language experience. Here we measured the MMN response in 5-6 year-old monolingual German and bilingual Turkish-German kindergarten children growing up in Germany. MMN was investigated to a German vowel contrast and to a vowel contrast that exists in Turkish and in German. The results show that compared to a German control group, the MMN response is less robust in Turkish-German children to the German vowel contrast. The response to the contrast that exists in both languages does not differ between groups. Overall, the results suggest that the Turkish-German children have not yet fully acquired the German phonetic inventory despite living in Germany since birth and being immersed in a German-speaking environment. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)

Trilingualism has often been studied within the framework established for bilingualism. Although there is overlap, the dynamics around trilingualism pose greater variations than is the case with bilingualism. The aim of this study is to analyse the language practices of different groups of trilingual families. Particular attention is paid to the influence of various sociocultural and linguistic factors on whether or not parents used their native languages (NL) with their children. In semi-structured interviews parents in 35 trilingual families in England and 35 in Germany described their language practices with their children. It was found that parental language choices were significantly influenced by their linguistic background. Parents who spoke one NL other than the community language were highly motivated in both countries to pass on their NLs and cultural values to their children. This was mainly related to the effectiveness of the One Person One Language strategy and support from grandparents. In contrast, bilingual/trilingual parents tended to use only one NL with their children, partly because the One Parent One Language was impractical or the beginning of school made it harder to use additional languages. The implications of these findings for typologies of trilingual families are examined in this article. (Contains 10 tables.)

The primary aim of this study was to determine whether native speakers of German living in either Canada or the Netherlands are perceived to have a foreign accent in their native German speech. German monolingual listeners (n = 19) assessed global foreign accent of 34 L1 German speakers in Anglophone Canada, 23 L1 German speakers in the Dutch Netherlands, and five German monolingual controls in Germany. The experimental subjects had moved to either Canada or the Netherlands at an average age of 27 years and had resided in their country of choice for an average of 37 years. The results revealed that the German listeners were more likely to perceive a global foreign accent in the German speech of the consecutive bilinguals in Anglophone Canada and the Dutch Netherlands than in the speech of the control group and that nine immigrants to Canada and five immigrants to the Netherlands were clearly perceived to be non-native speakers of German. Further analysis revealed that quality and quantity of contact with the native German language had a more significant effect on predicting global foreign accent in native speech than age of arrival or length of residence. Two types of contact were differentiated: (i) C-M represented communicative settings in which little code-mixing between the L1 and L2 was expected to occur, and (ii) C+M represented communicative settings in which code-mixing was expected to be more likely. The variable C-M had a significant impact on predicting foreign accent in native speech, whereas the variable C+M did not. The results suggest that contact with the L1 through communicative settings in which code-mixing is inhibited is especially conducive to maintaining the stability of native language pronunciation in consecutive bilinguals living in a migrant context. (Contains 1 footnote and 2 tables.)

In the early years of the twenty-first century, being German has become a matter of linguistic competence and performance. An acute shift in citizenship statutes at the end of the 1990s brought about a peripatetic departure from Germany's "right of blood" ("ius sanguinis") toward a French-inspired "right of territory" ("ius soli"). Yet in the nine years since the policy's implementation, a paradigm quite removed from territorial citizenship has taken hold--one that I will outline as a "ius linguarum", or "right of languages." This article analyzes the civic discourse on German language use as it has evolved from the late 1990s in immigration statutes, press discourse, school reform initiatives, and national service awards. Together, these developments serve as interlocking case studies in the emergence of a new cosmopolitan monolingualism--amid the fluctuating conditions of European integration and economic globalization. The article concludes with some speculations on the impact of a "ius linguarum" for teachers of literature and language in the German Studies context.