Since 2002, the "Innsbrucker Modell der Fremdsprachendidaktik" (IMoF) has been implementing new approaches in (foreign) language teacher education by offering all future (foreign) language teachers a common, integrated multilingual training. With its multilingual and team-taught lessons, IMoF aims at promoting cooperation between prospective foreign language teachers in schools ("model learning"). The present study in the field of action research aims at raising the students’ awareness of the experienced cross-linguistic team teaching and team learning so as to strengthen the desire to apply these principles in their future teaching. In order to elicit differences between students who have experienced the strategy of awareness raising (experimental group) and those who did not meet this strategy (control group), an experiment in a natural environment was carried out. Finally, conclusions for language teaching education were drawn on the basis of the results derived from the triangulation of quantitative and qualitative data.
Aufsätze
According to the results of international and national educational research, sex differences (or gender differences) in the classroom are of great interest again. While national research primarily focuses on girls’ mathematical competence and boys’ reading competence, little is investigated about boys’ achievement in the foreign language classroom. The aim of the present study was to discuss the theoretical frame of sex versus gender differences in the educational system, especially in the language classroom and to examine boys’ and girls’ motivational attributes towards English as a foreign language in the 8th and 9th grade of German lower track schools. The results confirm that gender differences vary across grades and do not achieve all of the theoretical expectations previously discussed.
The present study investigates metalinguistic skills and second and third language competence in young multilingual learners at the primary level. The main objective of the study is to establish whether children in multilingual educational programs in South Tyrol perform higher on a measure of metalinguistic skills and abilities and with regards to their L2 German and L3 English than children who receive traditional second and/or foreign language instruction. Four groups of elementary school pupils recruited from 2 Italian schools in Bolzano (each with multilingual and traditional instructional streams) participated in the study. All the participants completed a metalinguistic awareness test, a German and an English test. Significant positive effects of early multilingualism and multilingual schooling have been evidenced. A clear overall superiority was found for the subjects in the test groups. The results provide support for the benefits of early multilingualism and for the effectiveness of multilingual education programs.