Speaking in tongues

"The mother tongue is of no importance here," said Herma Knabe, a teacher at a general secondary school in the northern German town of Emden. Children whose background is not German are being offered German courses.

It is a similar picture in a primary school in Ronnenberg, where Katrin Salchow, a social education specialist, works. There are Turkish courses on offer, "but what about the other languages?," Salchow asked, hoping to find inspiration at Europe's biggest education fair, the didacta, which concluded on Saturday in Hanover.

One in three children grows up hearing and speaking two or more languages in Germany. In families with non-German backgrounds, German is often the second language after their mother tongue. Despite educators' best efforts, test results from these children still rank below those of kids with two German parents, according to the latest government report.

At the beginning of this year, the government hosted its fifth integration summit, which came up with a national action plan to boost integration. Language was one of its central issues.

'The target language is German'

"Teachers are crying out for help," Patricia Hahne-Wolter from the Multilingualism Network said at the didacta fair. But, too often, it is about finding quick fixes.

"What do I have to put in, so that at the end I can get German to come out," is the approach taken by many teachers, according to Hahne-Wolter.

In fact, Germany has spent plenty of money on courses for schools that focus on teaching German. But the reality is that many children from non-German backgrounds grasp neither German nor the other language or languages spoken at home.

Studies have shown that children whose mother tongue is strengthened first, then find it easier to follow classes in German, according to Andreas Rohde from the University of Cologne.

They also find it easier than their monolingual counterparts to learn additional languages as they've already internalized the necessary learning strategies, Rohde added.


Appreciating the mother tongue

In practice, there is no consensus on how to deal with multilingualism, according to Christina Trojan from the Goethe Institute, who trains teachers in ways to teach German as a second language.

"It's better to teach children in a group, rather than force them to take individual lessons," she said. She also said all teachers, regardless of their specialty should work to hone students' language skills.

Reyhan Kuyumcu from the University of Flensburg in the north of Germany, has made a case for staring to teach languages in German kindergartens, which attended by children before they begin school at the age of six.

Kuyumcu observed 15 children from the German-Turkish crèche "Mosaik" in the northern city of Kiel over several years. During the project, the children focused on their first language by speaking almost exclusively in Turkish.

"Later, in school, you could see that all the students did very well in class," Kuyumcu said. Most of them now attend an academic secondary school, Germany's top tier type of secondary education.

Hava Celik agreed with the experts. She tried to speak only German with her oldest two children. "That was a mistake," she said in retrospect. Both still have problems in Turkish and German, according to Celik.

But her youngest daughter is bilingual at age 6, and Celik attributes that to the fact that her family now speaks Turkish at home.

Author: Janine Albrecht / ng
Editor: Sean Sinico