Analyzing internationally unique dataNew perspectives on spoken and written multilingualismDoing the Research series

10 March 2022, by Anna Priebe

Photo: pixabay/Mitrey

Many children can read and write well in multiple languages. Researchers in the MARE project are studying how this can prove beneficial on the labor market.

Read Turkish, write in German, and Twitter in English: many children from non-ethnic German backgrounds can read and write in several languages. Dr. Irina Usanova and Dr. Birger Schnoor from the Faculty of Education are studying mutually influencing languages and their usability on the labor market.

Their project focuses on multiliteracies. What does that mean?

Irina Usanova: Multiliteracies is a term that means the ability to read and write in multiple languages, both in analog formats and using digital end devices.

All children in Germany become multilingual throughout their schooling: they not only learn German, they also learn at least one foreign language, usually English. Roughly half of German children learn a second foreign language. Families with migration backgrounds also have their language of origin. How well this can be read and written varies from language to language. We are especially interested in whether and how these abilities can be leveraged on the labor market.

How are you studying these abilities at MARE?

Usanova: We are relying on a number of well-founded theoretical approaches and models concerned with the ways that languages used by multilingual speakers relate to one another. For MARE, we’ve also been able to use the world’s most comprehensive data sets on multilingual reading and writing abilities among secondary school pupils in Germany so that we can submit the theories to empirical review, meaning using statistical models.

Birger Schnoor: The data come from the studies Mehrsprachigkeitsentwicklung im Zeitverlauf (MEZ) and Mehrsprachigkeit an der Schwelle zum Beruf (MEZ-2) conducted at Universität Hamburg under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Ingrid Gogolin. They cover language samples from about 2,000 secondary school pupils in Germany with German, German-Turkish, and German-Russian language backgrounds. Researchers looked at students’ reading and writing abilities in the language of instruction (German), their languages of origin (Turkish and Russian), and in the foreign languages taught at their schools (English and in some cases French and Russian). Between 2014 and 2020, the students were surveyed in 6 waves, from the beginning of their secondary schooling to their transition to university study or work.

What makes the data so special?

Schnoor: The MEZ data set involves a unique spectrum of linguistic testing data, for example reading comprehension and writing ability in the languages under consideration. Most studies in this field contain information only about the ways that speakers evaluate their own linguistic abilities. Even the large international educational studies that focus on student performance—such as PISA—do not have such a range of linguistic data because they have a different focus.

Are there already initial findings from your analysis?

Usanova: We can see that the languages in the speakers’ portfolios have a positive connection. Pupils who have greater abilities reading and writing in one language also do so in their other languages. We also see that the languages fortify one another over time—they work for each other as a resource to further build multiliteracy.

There is an inner core of literacy that they can immediately access.

Why is that?

Schnoor: If I can read and write in one language, then I have a basic understanding of what writing is, what letters are, how texts are constructed. That is knowledge that is only partially connected to a specific language; the principles span languages. If I learn a new language, I am not starting at ground zero. I have to learn language-specific aspects such as vocabulary, but there is an inner core of literacy that I can depend on.

Usanova: Thus far, we have only theoretically assumed this kind of strategic knowledge. Now we have been able to create a model using empirical data. Therefore, our research strengthens resource-oriented perspectives of multilingualism: Multilingualism is not a deficit or impediment but the foundation and source of linguistic learning.

What are the implications of your project?

Schnoor: We are especially interested in multiliteracy as a human resource and in the question about to what extent this ability goes hand-in-hand with educational success and the transition to the labor market. In the wake of internationalization and the transformation of manual labor to work based on writing, the demand is growing for multiliterate workers.

Usanova: We work together with Hamburg’s labor office and develop test procedures to effectively ascertain the multilingual abilities of migrants new to Germany. These people often have no proof of their language abilities such as school transcripts or the like. If we can measure those abilities here, however, we can develop measures to integrate them into the labor market that are suited to their degree of literacy.

Schnoor: This would also help people see that these people’s multilingualism is a labor resource, even if they have no official documents. This application is especially important to us at MARE because it means putting research findings directly into practice.