Britta Hövelbrinks: Bildungssprachliche Kompetenz [...]

Reviewed by ao. Prof. i.R. Dr. Franz Dotter, 2015-07-09

Britta Hövelbrinks: Bildungssprachliche Kompetenz von einsprachig und mehrsprachig aufwachsenden Kindern. Eine vergleichende Studie in naturwissenschaftlicher Lernumgebung des ersten Schuljahres. Beltz Juventa (Weinheim und Basel) 2014. 340 pages. ISBN 978-3-7799-2984-0. D: 39,95 EUR, A: 41,10 EUR, CH: 51,90 sFr.

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Summary

A very valuable book which offers detailed research results on the language development of children of migrants compared with German ones (on the basis of first class primary pupils). Methodologically correct, it shows arguably that migrant children have some disadvantages not only „indirectly“ from their wider social context but also „directly“ from their partially lacking command of German. But it also shows that a simple hypothesis of „migrant children are weaker in all language tasks at school“ does not work.

The critique goes against the description of the respective language phenomena as „academic vs. non-academic“ or „everyday language – academic language – language for special purposes“. These dichotomy/trichotomy is not adequate to describe phenomena which are central for German. A second critical point is the ignorance of different variants of German in favour of a unique group of „monolingual German“ children; the same may be valid for the homogeneous perspective on migrants coming from very different states/cultures.

Review by
ao. Prof. i.R. Dr. Franz Dotter
Sprachwissenschaftler, Universität Klagenfurt
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