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...

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...

Chunsch druus? (Swiss German for “get it?”) is a learning programme aimed at the general, mainly younger learner who wishes to develop key linguistic competences necessary for coping with the challenges of everyday life in the German part of Switzerland. Integration in the largest sector of Switzerland mustn’t overlook the use of dialect. This does not mean that foreigners, migrants or Swiss who speak Italian and French necessarily need to learn how to speak a Swiss German dialect –...

This project adopts a sociolinguistic approach to examine the linguistic aspects of tourism on three levels: 1. How do people deal with multilingualism in basic interaction, for example, at the airport or the tourist information desk? 2. How are these practices established in training programs? 3. What linguistic strategies are applied when advertising a particular tourist destination, for example, in slogans and brochures?

The city Biel/Bienne is experiencing an economic boom. Alongside the traditional watch industry, Biel/Bienne has set its sights on diversification and is now exploring the service and communication sector. This recent development is particularly interesting due to its link to the city’s bilingual character which in turn, is regarded as a major factor in the economic upswing. In the service and communication sector, bilingualism – or even multilingualism – has effectively become the actual...

In line with the growth of linguistically mediated knowledge in the neoliberal new economy, the international health care sector requires some of its workforce to be multilingual, reflecting an increasing multilingualization as a means of economic expansion and localization. Similar to other service-oriented industries that cater to an international audience, language skills and multilingual repertoires mean an added value to the products of health care providers. This invites us to...

At the turn of the century, the globalized economy, the weight of international agencies and transnational migrations have increased the demand for multilingual competences in the workplace. In particular, humanitarian agencies must recruit and train mobile and multilingual skilled workers to deploy their humanitarian missions.

Using the healthcare industry as a site of study, this project aims to uncover the conditions in which particular configurations of language proficiency and speakers become desired commodities, as the demands of globally mobile patients are managed, the needs of migrant patients are accommodated and the linguistic, symbolic and cultural capitals of healthcare workers are regulated and exchanged.

The potential to learn foreign languages varies from one individual to the next and has been investigated by many researchers as of the early 1950s. Individuals’ ability to learn foreign languages relies on various elements that have been identified and grouped under the term language aptitude (ability to retrieve, identify and memorise sound sequences belonging to foreign languages, ability to identify meaningful common features etc.). Another area of the research focuses on emotional/personality...

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: