Counting languages: history, methods and politics of population censuses

Project management

Team

Philippe Humbert

This literature review aims to present an overview of scientific research on the social, political and linguistic issues of language census by analysing international works conducted in various sociopolitical and sociolinguistic contexts. The purpose is to highlight the complexity of documenting languages as required for each census when quantifying information on respondents’ language practices.

Duration

01.2016 - 12.2017

Keywords

Diversity, Evaluation, History, Institutions, Policy

Written productions from children with an immigration background

Project management

Amelia Lambelet

Team

Audrey Bonvin, Jan Vanhove

Fabio Soares

This project aims to describe the development of productive writing skills in children with a Portuguese immigration background living in Switzerland (in the language of origin and in the language of instruction). It is based on data collected as part of the project Language of origin and language at school: are language skills transferable? (HLC) from the work programme 2011-2015 by the Research Centre on Multilingualism. The project will be divided into three stages:

Duration

01.2016 - 12.2017

Keywords

Competences, Corpus, Evaluation, Migration

Teaching and learning foreign languages at school under the sign of multilingualism

Project management

Elisabeth Peyer

Team

Malgorzata Barras, Gabriela Lüthi, Karolina Kofler

Scientific partner: Sylvia Nadig PH Zug

This project aimed to gain empirical knowledge about how learners deal with multilingual teaching approaches in the foreign language classroom and to acquire a better understanding of the potential and the functioning of different types of multilingual teaching activities.

Duration

03.2016 - 02.2019

Keywords

Didactics, Diversity, Interaction, Learning, Teaching

Upper management and multilingualism in the Federal Administration

Project management

Daniel Kübler

Team

Roman Zwicky

The directors of the roughly seventy administrative units at the Swiss Federal Administration are responsible for ensuring that the prevailing rules regarding linguistic representation are upheld (in accordance with the Languages Act, the Languages Ordinance and directives on multilingualism). Persons in such influential positions have a certain amount of discretionary power and can thus have a major impact on the adequate representation of linguistic groups and the promotion of multilingualism...

Duration

01.2016 - 09.2018

Keywords

Diversity, Institutions, Policy

Innovative forms of assessment

In-depth study on competence-based assessment of receptive skills

Project management

Peter Lenz

Team

Katharina Karges, Nina Bechtiger, Thomas Aeppli, Malgorzata Barras

(associated thesis project)

If the aim is to measure how well learners can actually use a foreign language, then competence-oriented testing with near-authentic tasks is the method of choice. There is, however, a need for renewal in the design of such test tasks, especially because real-world language use often uses electronic channels. Chat, Internet searches and the like are part of everyday life. In addition, computer-based testing has increasingly become the norm in recent years, especially in the field of...

Duration

01.2016 - 12.2019

Keywords

Cognition, Competences, Didactics, Evaluation, Teaching

Literature review: Language aptitude

Project management

Amelia Lambelet

This research overview focuses on differences between individuals when it comes to results in learning foreign languages in school. The aim is to identify and discuss studies about factors responsible for differences in the potential to learn foreign languages from one individual to the next as well as the various tools designed to evaluate them (MLAT, LLAMA, CANAL-FT, FLCAS etc.). The research overview will be structured around the following themes:

Duration

01.2016 - 12.2019

Keywords

Cognition, Competences

Research Centre on Multilingualism

Why are the linguistic minorities underrepresented in the Swiss federal administration? How is the new multilingual teaching approach being implemented at school? How useful are heritage language competences for learning the local language? How and with which consequences is multilingualism being conceptualised in statistical surveys? These are just some of the questions researchers at the RCM are examining when considering practical challenges in schools, public administration and society.

Round tables on language teaching and learning

Visit the CeDiLE's website for all videos and podcasts

Babylonia

The interviews for each new issue are available here

Any questions?

Make use of the services of our Documentation Centre

Research

Our research projects on multilingualism adopt different disciplinary, theoretical and methodological approaches.

National network

Collaboration and networking are one of RCM's main priorities.

Digital holdings of the Research Centre

Access to the Web Portal to Multilingualism:

CeDiLE

The Centre for Foreign Language Teaching (CeDiLE) cultivates knowledge transfer between practicioners, researchers and educationalists in the field of foreign language eduction.

Research at the RCM

Research Centre on Multilingualism

We propose a scientific and empirical contribution to current social questions pertaining to multilingualism.

Doctoral programme

A structured academic support for doctoral students in multilingualism research

30 Apr	Rencontre et discussion autour de la littératie plurilingue
12 May	Artefakte im Sprachenunterricht: vom Bedarf zum Produkt / Artefacts dans l'apprentissage des langues : du besoin au produit