NEWS: WERA – Invitation Online Symposium of the German Research Cluster, Language Education and Multilingualism

Dear WERA Colleagues and friends,

WERA shares an opportunity to an online Symposium on Language Education and Multilinguslism, on 3-4 December 2020. If you would like to participate in this event, please see below invitation for more information.

Dear colleagues and friends,

From 2013-2020 the research cluster Language Education and Multilingualism aimed to increase knowledge about language development and learning under the multilingual conditions of a migration society. Following the United States and Saudi Arabia, Germany is the country with the third highest number of international migrants. An increasing number of young people thus grow up speaking a language other than or alongside German in their families. Moreover, all young people in this globalised society are expected to acquire foreign-language skills in education. So, what are the consequences of multilingualism for development, education, and skills?

Funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the projects of the cluster have focused on fundamental questions concerning multilingualism as a resource for learning and have tested the effectiveness of their research findings in educational practice.

On 3-4 December, we will share the design and research results of the projects
and discuss the implications of these findings for multilingual development.

You can look forward to presentations on the following topics:
vMultilingualism as a cognitive resource in foreign-language acquisition
vFostering multilingualism for regular subject (i.e. non-language) learning
vIntercultural school development
vApproaches to support reading skills in heterogeneous learner groups
vThe interrelation between writing skills in the different languages of bi-/multilingual pupils
vLongitudinal observations on bi- and multilingual development in education
(You can read the full programme at the end of this invitation)

Please register for this event at https://www.kombi.uni-hamburg.de/en/onlinesymposium.html. We will then send an email confirming your registration. Once you are fully registered, you will receive an email with the conference link and password shortly before the conference. We kindly ask you not to share these details with anybody else. Of course, you may share the link for registration with interested colleagues. All conference participants must register in advance.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the conference hosts: The Coordination Office for Multilingualism and Language Education (aka KoMBi)
Prof. Ingrid Gogolin, Antje Hansen, Dr. Sarah McMonagle
Faculty of Education, University of Hamburg, Germany
Email: kombi@uni-hamburg.de

Symposium Programme*

(*times and presentations are subject to change; all times are CET)

Thursday, 3rd December
11:00 Introduction to the Symposium
11:15 – 12:00 Introductory Lecture
Language Diversity and Language Education: Lessons from Research in Germany
Prof. Ingrid Gogolin, University of Hamburg
12:15 – 13:00
Plurilingual foreign-language teaching – Myths, facts and potentials
Prof. Holger Hopp (1), Dr. Dieter Thoma (2), Dr. Jenny Jakisch (1), Teresa Kieseier (2), Sarah Sturm (1)
(1) TU Braunschweig, (2) University of Mannheim
13:00 – 14:00 Break
14:00 – 14:45
Fostering language in multilingual mathematics classrooms – How can we exploit the epistemic function of multilingual resources?
Prof. Susanne Prediger (1), Ángela Uribe (1), Prof. Angelika Redder (2), Arne Krause (2), Jonas Wagner (2)
(1) TU Dortmund & (2) University of Hamburg
14:45 – 15:00 City tour of Hamburg (If you can’t come to Hamburg, we bring Hamburg to you!)
15:00 – 15:45
“When you get into the topic, new worlds open up” – Multilingualism in the field of school development
Dr. Imke Lange (1), Dr. Katrin Huxel (2)
(1) University of Hamburg, (2) University of Münster
15:45 – 16:00 Closing Session Day 1

Friday, 4th December
11:00 – 11:45
Promoting reading skills in the language of schooling via multilingual-sensitive reciprocal teaching in primary school
Prof. Jasmin Decristan (1), Prof. Dominque Rauch (2), Victoria Kramer (3) & Valentina Reitenbach (1)
(1) University of Wuppertal, (2) PH Ludwigsburg, (3) Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education (DIPF)
12:00 – 12:45
Majority-language Classes Aid Development of the Heritage Language: Examining Causal Relationships Between Written Texts in Two Languages
Prof. Nicole Marx (1), Prof. Torsten Steinhoff (2)
(1) University of Cologne, (2) University of Siegen
12:45 – 13:00 Don’t forget to move! Exercises at your desk
13:00 – 14:00 Break
14:00 – 14:45
Developing biliteracy across subject areas in lower secondary education (Title TBC)
Prof. Heike Roll (2), Dr. Erkan Gürsoy (2), Prof. Heiko Krabbe (1), Prof. Martin Lang (2), Dr. Işıl Uluçam-Wegmann (2), Christian Steck (2), Mareike-Cathrine Wickner (2)
(1) Ruhr-University Bochum, (2)University of Duisburg-Essen

15:00 – 15:45
Multiliteracy: The interrelation between writing abilities in the first and second language and extra-linguistic factors
Prof. Claudia Maria Riehl
LMU Munich
15:45 – 16:00 Don’t forget to move! Exercises at your desk
16:15– 17:00
The interrelation of reading and writing skills in multilingual pupils in Germany
Prof. Ingrid Gogolin, Julia Heimler, Thorsten Klinger, Dr. Birger Schnoor, Dr. Irina Usanova
University of Hamburg
17:00 End of Symposium