The aim of this project is to study the linguistic competences of bilingual children when producing written texts in Spanish. The participant children attend heritage language and culture (HLC) courses. The main research question is: How do bilingual children of Spanish-speaking origin learn and conserve writing competences in Spanish in a context of formal instruction (HLC courses)?

Swiss National Science Foundation, project funding, Project no. 135407 The aim of this project is to develop basic standards for the languages taught at schools where Rhaeto-Romanic is spoken (i.e. Rumantsch Grischun (RG) and German). The standards are based on those used throughout Switzerland for German, French and Italian in the context of the so-called HarmoS-L1-Consortium. Wherever possible, a procedure analogous to the HarmoS methods will be chosen. 

In this project, commissioned by NWEDK, EDK Ost and BKZ, suitable lingualevel test packages were compiled to test the levels of the foreign languages French and English in public schools in the German-speaking cantons, years 6 through 9. These assessments allow planners to accurately gauge the current abilities students have in the foreign languages and to provide useful information for more efficient planning in the future.

This practical research project, commissioned by the Swiss Conference of Cantonal Ministers of Education (EDK), grants interested Swiss schools access to the internationally recognised certificate Deutsch for Jugendliche ZD j (German for young people/teenagers, level B1 in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages). The main task lies in informing and advising schools as well as in arranging license agreements for them. In addition, any student who is interested...

The three German-speaking countries in Europe have developed a cooperation to revise and develop international diplomas for German as a foreign or second language – a very interesting topic for and in Switzerland. The University of Fribourg has been commissioned by the EDK to participate in the project with the German partners Goethe Institute (GI) and The European Language Certificates (telc) as well as the Austrian association Österreichisches Sprachdiplom Deutsch (ÖSD).

From 2006 to 2009, an official proposal for Swiss educational standards was formulated within the framework of the project HarmoS of the EDK. After concluding the political consultations, the standards required finalisation. To do so, the EDK held an initial seminar on 19-20 December 2010 (second seminar on 12-13 January 2011) to determine the final version (in three languages) of national educational standards for German, French and English as foreign languages at the end of primary...

A joint research initiative of the Evolutionary Processes in Language and Culture Group and the project Categories across Language and Cognition, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen

Adult language acquisition (of German) has generated a great deal of scientific interest over the past decades. However, variation in input and output as a consequence of specific sociolinguistic contexts has mostly been neglected so far. The present project focuses on untutored language acquisition in the German-speaking part of Switzerland and on the question of how standard and dialect interact in the emergence of second language systems.

Sinergia-Project of the Swiss National Science Foundation, no. 130457 This project examines dimensions of multilingualism that have heretofore received little attention in research. The question at the core of the project concerns how the areas of competence necessary for learning and using more than one language change and develop over the course of an individual’s lifetime. The linguistic areas considered incorporate the multifaceted nature of language acquisition and use, and cover...