Session Information
31 SES 10, Understanding Home Language Use in Multilingual Families and its Implications for Education Research
Symposium
Contribution
Language use at home is considered to be one of the key factors influencing multilingual students’ language development. In large-scale studies a quantitative approach based on the perceived frequency of home language family use is often used for capturing information on language use of multilinguals (see for example the PISA study: OECD 2012). However the question arises, whether the quantitative measuring suffices for revealing the complexity of bilingual language practices. The unque contribution of the present paper to current research on capturing the language use lies in its methodological approach, which combines quantitative and qualitative methods for data gathering and analyses. This paper reports on the results of a sequential study “Sprabilon-R” (Language Development of Bilingual and Monolingual Adolescents in a Longitudinal Perspective- Retrospective) which was conducted in the years 2012-2014 in Germany. A primary aim of this study was to examine the influence of biographical data on individual differences in receptive and productive language competencies of pupils with and without migration background. For this purpose, nearly 270 15-year-old students performed language tests and filled in background questionnaires, whereas 30 students, their parents and teachers were selected for further personal interviews. Thus, a wide scope of information on language use was provided in students’ questionnaires and personal interviews with the families. In the present contribution, we contrasted the data on language use provided by students with Russian and Turkish migration backgrounds and their parents in both questionnaires and interviews and across three time cohorts. In a first step, we tested the degree to which the information on familial language provided by the parents and the adolescents overlapped across the three cohorts In a second step we analyzed the ways the concept of language use is described in the qualitative interviews. Findings suggest that (a) data from the adolescents and their parents as to the languages mostly spoken overlaps only to a certain extent; (b) data and overlapping changes greatly over time; (c) the qualitative data provides a much broader perspective on language use in multilingual families, thus offering relevant dimensions of the concept other than frequency of use. In terms of methodology, the current paper provides some implications for the conceptualizing language use in quantitative questionnaires by indicating relevant dimensions found by qualitative methods of data collection.
References
Auer, P. 2009. „Competence in performance: Code-switching und andere Formen bilingualen Sprechens“. In: I. Gogolin und U. Neumann (Hrsg.), Streitfall Zweisprachigkeit – The Bilingualism Controversy. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, S. 91-110. García, O. and Li Wei. 2014. Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Kuckartz, U. 2014. Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse. Methoden, Praxis, Computerunterstützung. 2. Auflage. Weinheim: Beltz-Juventa
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.