This project was realised within a DORE project of the University of Teacher Training Valais and examined the influence the bilingual study requirements have on future teachers’ ability to acquire professional skills. Valais students’ skills in German and French were assessed before and after the two-semester exchange at the institution’s location in the other linguistic region of the canton.

This mandate from the cantonal government in Graubünden concerned the follow-up of introducing the newly consolidated written language Rumantsch Grischun to the so-called pioneer communes in the Canton of Graubünden. The communes in question were those with Rhaeto-Romanic schools already teaching Rumantsch Grischun. The long-term plan was to introduce the new language to all Rhaeto-Romanic schools. We evaluatedvarious dimensions resulting from this major change.

Promoting the integration of migrants in Switzerland is a legislative objective of the Swiss Federal Council, and the ability to speak one of the country’s languages is regarded as a critical step towards realising this goal. This overarching aim and the federal model “Framework proposal to promote language skills” (Rahmenkonzept Sprachförderung) provided the basis for the Institute of Multilingualism’s “Framework curriculum for promoting language skills of migrants”, commissioned by...

This pan-European project was initiated in 2010 by the British Council and aimed at developing an index in order to compare the language environment in 20 European countries. The index captures the following aspects: (foreign) language teaching, languages in the workplace, in the media and in public spaces as well as language policy. Several language types were analysed: official state language(s), foreign languages, regional minority languages and immigrant minority languages....

The SEM had issued a mandate to the Institute of Multilingualism to develop a quality strategy for fide language courses. The purpose of the strategy is to create a common understanding of fide’s didactic principles and to support the implementation of fide in practices used to support language learning. The evaluation of the introductory fide courses and various comments from educational institutions had shown that fide was still interpreted in a variety of ways.

This project is based on the results of a survey of teachers at upper secondary schools, which was carried out by the General Secretariat of the Swiss Conference of Cantonal Ministers of Education (EDK). The results revealed a need to couple new methodological approaches in foreign language teaching – and the corresponding instruments – with teaching literature. This issue is of particular relevance in upper secondary schools, where language learning is embedded in a literary-cultural...