Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 928

Part of Session 188: Relating the Productions of Multilingual Children and Adolescents in their Languages (Other abstracts in this session)

Bilingual resources and school context: Case studies from Germany and Turkey

Authors: Mehlem, Ulrich (1); Simsek, Yazgül (2); Schroeder, Christoph (2)
Submitted by: Schroeder, Christoph (University of Potsdam, Germany, Germany)

In our talk we will present some results of our recently conducted research project investigating ‘literacy acquisition in schools in Germany and Turkey, in the context of migration and multilingualism’ (LAS-Project, cf. http://www.uni-potsdam.de/daf/projekte/las.html).

The primary objective of our presentation will be to explore bilingual strategies and cross-linguistic influences in oral and written text products of Turkish-German bilingual students in Germany and Turkish-Kurdish bilinguals in Turkey (1^st and 7^th graders, we concentrate on the 7^th graders). The texts were collected as part of a test in which the students watched a short film with several scenes of conflicts at school. They then were asked to choose one of the scenes and to tell a personal story about it. This narrative was written down in the second part of the session. About a month later, the students were presented the same material, but this time they were invited to use their first language, Turkish and Kurdish, respectively.

Based on different approaches to biliteracy (Hornberger et al. 2003, Maas 2008, 2010) and crosslinguistic text-production in different modes (Berman & Verhoeven 2002, Ravid et al. 2002) the texts were analysed under different perspectives: transformations occurring at the orate-literate continuum (differences of register), narrative structure, typological influences of the dominant school language in terms of morphology, syntax and orthography.

The presentation will reconstruct case studies of different pupils that are characterised by a range of different variables indicating a stronger tendency towards one or the other end of the different continua. On one hand, the cross-linguistic influence involves almost all linguistic areas, revealing multiple strategies of the children to cope with their two languages in order to fulfil a given writing task and to convey information in spoken discourse. On the other side, the students position themselves on an orate-literate continuum, crosscutting the mere difference of speech and writing. We will exemplify these different strategies in some linguistic areas, which seem to demonstrate the most salient variations being determined, amongst others, by language typological factors.

With our approach, we hope to be giving an extensive view on the bilinguals’ language resources and to bridge the gap between more formal and more culture embedded approaches to literacy acquisition.

References:

Ravid, D., J. van Hell, E. Rosado & A. Zamora. 2002. Subject NP patterning in the development of text production: Speech and writing. Written Language and Literacy, 5, 69-94.

Berman, R. / L. Verhoeven 2002. Developing text production abvilitires across lamgiage, genre and modality. Written Language and Literacy, 5, 1-43.

Hornberger, Nancy H. / Ellen Skilton-Sylvester. 2003. Revisiting the continua of biliteracy: International and critical perspectives, in: Hornberger, N. H. (ed.). Continua of biliteracy. An ecological framework for educational policy, research and practice in multilingual settings. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 35-67.

Maas, Utz. 2008. Sprache und Sprachen in der Migrationsgesellschaft. Die schriftkulturelle Dimension. Göttingen: V&R unipress Universitätsverlag Osnabrück

Maas, Utz. 2010. Literat und orat. Grundbegriffe der Analyse geschriebener und gesprochener Sprache. Grazer Linguistische Studien 73, 21-150.

Sociolinguistics Symposium 19

Programme: accepted abstracts

Bilingual resources and school context: Case studies from Germany and Turkey