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).

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.

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:

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...

At the start of the school year 2018/2019, the Canton of Solothurn will begin the comprehensive introduction of Clin d’œil and New World, the new foreign language textbooks developed in the scope of the “Passepartout” project. Both textbooks have already been used in lower-secondary schools B (basic curriculum) and E (expanded curriculum) since the start of the school year 2015/2016.