Bilingual education (Bilingualer Unterricht) at Secondary I-II


This project originated as a response to the challenge current not only in present-day Europe that children are to learn at least three languages in school at a functionally appropiate level. It is commonly agreed, that the time span of sec. I-II is sufficient to promote one additional language via Bilingualer Unterricht/Immersion. But there is not enough time to promote the second additional language to the same extent. Consequently, there is a common agreement among educators that foreign language teaching needs to start much earlier, preferably during the first grade of primary or before.

In the sec. I-II project we studied the acquisition and development of English as the first foreign language. The endeavor was part of the evaluation of an experimental German-type bilingual education program initiated in 1991 to introduce immersion teachin in the state of Schleswig-Holstein.

Principal collaborators: M. Knust, K. Kickler, P. Burmeister, A. Daniel, V. Mukherjee, I. Cohrs, B. Nerlich, M. Reinhard