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42 They have given their project the name LiLaC – Literacy between Languages and Cultures: The research team in Dortmund comprises linguists Annette Herkenrath, Professor Dr. Ludger Hoffmann, Professor Dr. Uta Quast - hoff (behind, left) and Sören Ohlhus, Nicole Hinrichs, Nils Kremeskötter (foreground from the left). Professor Dr. Ludger Hoffmann and Nils Kremeskötter discussing the acoustic analysis of vocal intonation. will help to change: She is joined in the project by her colleagues Professor Dr. Ludger Hoffmann and Professor Dr. Dr. Michael Kastner from Dortmund. Their main research objective is to develop concepts designed to support migrants and disadvantaged “monolinguists” in their dealings with official agencies – for example by means of developing simplified or translated forms, qualified help in filling out forms, or customized courses of further education. Quasthoff and her colleagues started their project by carrying out the necessary empirical analysis. They intend to throw light on the economic, social, and cultural difficulties experienced by first and second generation Turkish migrants as well as monolinguists from comparable backgrounds in their dealings with officialdom: Where do non-native speakers perceive room for improvements and what are the most frequently occurring problems. To help them in their investigation, the team has distributed questionnaires in several underprivileged neighborhoods in the industrial Ruhr district. “By comparing the two groups, we hope to find out how much of the problem can be traced to multilingualism and migration biographies, and what is more likely attributable to low levels of education or other forms of social disadvantage”, explains Uta Quasthoff. Some 400 respondents answered the questionnaire. From this initial group, the team will eventually select 48 participants with whom they will conduct comprehensive autobiographical interviews, ideally representatives across three generations of a family. “One of our objectives is to determine the linguistic skills common to each different age group; another is to find out how specific factors influence their contact with the public authorities – e.g. educational background, gender, or life courses.” They will also examine the interviewees’ self-perception with regard to whether they see themselves in the mainstream of society, or more on the periphery. By employing a cross-generational form of investigation the Dortmund researchers hope to reveal how the perspectives and attitudes within a migrant family change over time. The interviews are also expected to result in useable proposals to improve the situation. This is the common approach shared by all three “Study Groups on Migration and Integration” working on questions of structure and change of language within the Foundation’s funding scheme. First, they investigate where language difficulties hinder integration. Then the research results will help to identify ways to introduce practical changes designed to facilitate the integration of migrants. This also applies to the research project run by Professor Dr. Michael Bommes from the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS) at the University of Osnabrück. He and his colleagues are researching how children are taught how to write in Germany and in Turkey – and how the different organization of schooling in the two countries impacts on this process. The title of the project is “Learning to read and write at school in circumstances
of migration and multilingualism”: The Volkswagen Foundation is providing 658,000 euros to fund the project. The participating research scholars – the sociologist Inken Sürig and the linguists Dr. Ulrich Mehlem, Anja Boneß, and Helena Olfert from IMIS – started their project by a one-year field study. They observed the first (6/7-year-olds) and seventh grades (13-year-olds) of schools in Duisburg-Rheinhausen, every week for two hours: They employed five video cameras, documented the course of lessons, and copied homework and tests. In both groups, one third of the pupils are being brought up with more than one language, most of them speaking Turkish at home. For them, so the researchers believe, learning to read and write is particularly challenging, as the language of instruction is not their native tongue. By means of the study the IMIS team will analyze closely how the pupils learn to transfer sounds into letters, how they distinguish between oral and written language, and how they acquire the skills necessary to develop differentiated forms of written expression. Moreover, as sociological factors are so important in determining academic success at school – for example how readily a child slips into the role of pupil – the research team will also look into the children’s social backgrounds. This will be done on the basis of comprehensive interviews with six German and six Turkish children from each school group, as well as their parents. “The idea of this is to find out whether there is a connection between the family’s educational background and the children’s role behavior in the classroom”, Inken Sürig explains. The ultimate goal that she and her colleagues have set themselves is to identify major factors which facilitate the children’s approach to written language. The researchers have already come up with some interesting results. For instance, they were quite surprised to learn just how little the Duisburg seventh-grade pupils actually had to put pen and pencil to paper. “It was mostly left up to the pupils themselves to decide whether they would make notes during the lessons”, reports Ulrich Mehlem. Furthermore, the IMIS team could observe that pupils who experienced difficulty in expressing themselves adequately otherwise took very active part in lessons – clearly their lack of verbal skills does not impair oral participation. The researchers registered language deficits on the part of both the German pupils as well as multilingual children. They were particularly impressed, though, by the learning zeal of many of the migrant children. Changing the scene, in Turkey the research group around Professor Dr. Chris - toph Schroeder from Bilgi University, in Istanbul, is carrying out a methodically identical study to the Osnabrück group in an Istanbul suburb with a largely Kurdish population. The international research team hopes to gain some interesting insights from their study – above all because education in Turkey stems from quite another tradition from that of Germany. “A sizable part of the population in Turkey, for instance, is still illiterate, so that the acquisition of writing skills assumes a much greater cultural significance and is directly associated with social success”, Ulrich Mehlem points out the differences. It’s back to school for the migration researchers in the team led by Professor Dr. Michael Bommes (left) in Osnabrück. They are conducting research on the language acquisition of Turkish children. The team (from the left): Dr. John Peterson, research assistants Inken Sürig, Anja Boneß, Helena Olfert and Dr. Ulrich Mehlem. Crossing Borders 2010 43
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