This study investigated adult learners' experiences with the language of their new living environment. Migrants and refugees' personal goals for language learning in their specific life situations were captured in in-depth interviews conducted as part of ethnographically oriented field studies in Finland and Germany. Interpretative…

Language assessment is a central aspect not only of language education in the general population, but also amongst heterogeneous, low-incidence populations. One such population are immigrant deaf and hard-of-hearing learners (IDML) who are bimodal-multilingual and whose languages development often includes the spoken, written, and/or signed…

For newly arrived students who are d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH), language acquisition is particularly complex. The spectrum of initial language situations ranges from no first language to multilingual acquisition contexts. In Germany, there are currently no studies that focus on the education of these learners. This prompted an interview study…

Lower vocabulary in German is repeatedly reported for students with Turkish migration background attending school in Germany. We investigated whether in students of Turkish descent (a) learning vocabulary is impaired when the teacher activates the negative stereotype that students with Turkish family language learn less well and (b) whether a…

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…

This article explores how ideology is embedded in the cultural content of textbooks used in Germany's integration courses for migrants. Using critical multimodal discourse analysis, I analyze two dimensions of meaning in linguistic and visual (multimodal) texts: meaning as representation and meaning as inter/action. I analyze how social actors are…

The German government requires all migrants without sufficient German language proficiency to enroll in integration courses. Many of these migrants had few prior experiences with formal education, yet, regardless of degree of literacy in any language, they are placed in classes based on language proficiency. How well do government-approved…

By focusing on 179 elementary school children, the present cross-sectional questionnaire study aimed to examine gender and immigrant-native differences in competence and affect self-concepts as well as academic achievement and the relations of those two self-concept components to academic achievement in the domains of mathematics and German.…

The present study contributes to the field of bilingual and trilingual language acquisition by analysing four multilingual families. In each family, at least one parent is bilingual. Following research questions will be addressed: (A) "How relevant are the (amount of) input and the (kind of) parental language strategies for language…

Many metropolitan cities have undergone rapid demographic changes in recent years, and such changes hasten and widen linguistic diversities. Similar changes are happening in Sydney, Australia and Hamburg, Germany. These changes are most acutely felt and observed in the classrooms where multiple languages are spoken, despite a prevalent monolingual…

In this paper, we make a theoretical and methodical case for combining Institutional Ethnography and Reflexive Grounded Theory to investigate linguistic transition processes of newly-arrived students in the German school system. Legitimised by a missing knowledge of German, the students are separated into preparatory classes in order to prepare…

This article explores how the development of mother-tongue instruction (MTI) policies in the Danish welfare state have created varying notions of difference and sameness in the schooling of migrant students and how they experience these notions locally in practice. Based on an analysis of MTI's policy history and oral history interviews with…

Writing, as a highly complex strategic literacy skill alongside reading, is an essential prerequisite for learning and determines a student's educational success. In diverse contexts, a student's linguistic repertoire may involve multiple languages, which may serve as mutual resources in his or her multilingual writing skill development. Drawing…

Bilingualism has been the subject of a lot of research in the last century. Bilingualism is having the competence to speak two languages. The reasons for bilingualism of individuals may differ. Some of them may have parents from different languages, some may be children of ethnic minority or immigrants. In daily life it is possible to encounter…

The main objective of the article is to illustrate how language ideologies and language management at the macro-level (state language policy), micro-level (in families) and meso-level (local communities) influence language change and the conceptualization of multilingualism of immigrants from Upper Silesia residing in Germany. Language biographies…