Prior research indicates that humans adapt their language depending on context. This linguistic sensitivity has been suggested to indicate a natural pedagogy shared by all humans. This sensitivity has, however, only been demonstrated with English-speaking samples thus far. In two studies, we followed the experimental procedure of the original…

Developing young learners' language awareness is becoming an important educational goal in a rapidly globalised world characterised by linguistic and cultural diversity. Drawing upon previous research in the field, the article highlights the importance of promoting language diversity and nurturing language awareness from an early age. We present a…

The starting point for this research is an eTandem initiative between learners of Mandarin Chinese and German. The participants mainly learnt the dominant variety of their target languages (German Standard German, Mainland Chinese Standard Mandarin), however, their tandem partners are speakers of a non-dominant variety (Austrian Standard German,…

This article investigates how linguistic landscapes (LLs) can foster critical thinking about linguistic power relations and tensions in multilingual areas by acting as stimuli to reflect on the ethnolinguistic vitality of languages in a given region. We examine the pedagogical use of LLs as resources for the implementation of plurilingual…

This paper argues for bringing insights from linguistics into the world language classroom. At any level of study, such insights can add intellectual interest to the study of a target language (TL), and can also help students accept and acquire aspects of the TL that are different from their first language or that are inherently challenging. As a…

German is a language with multiple standard and non-standard varieties (Fagan, 2009). Yet L2 textbooks still favor one standard form, offering little information about other varieties of the language. In particular, Austrian and Swiss Standard German are underrepresented, and even when present, the language is often in a mixture of dialect and…

This explorative, qualitative study examines the use and effectiveness of resources of multilinguality, with particular regard to the development of causal links in geography classes. Contentual and linguistic strategies of multilingual pupils in creating causal links were collected and evaluated systematically. This was done by means of a…

The German classroom should prepare students for the linguistic diversity of the target culture, including regional varieties and German spoken outside of the D-A-CH region. Because textbooks do not often include materials on regional varieties, this article presents a model to incorporate Pennsylvania German (PG) into the curriculum. The model…

This article presents a qualitative study of five monolingual teachers' understandings of the linguistic repertoires of their multilingual students. These teachers deliver the Saskatchewan provincial curricula in English to Hutterite colony students who are users of three languages: (a) spoken Hutterisch as a home and community language, (b)…

This article presents the concept of Jewish Lithuanian as a range of post-Yiddish varieties spoken by some Jews in Lithuania and seeks to synthesise findings in contemporary ethnolect studies and in the field of Jewish language research. The legitimacy of the term "ethnolect" is questioned by some researchers; however, it is argued that…