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Learning mathematics under conditions of multilingualism

The event has been held regularly since the summer semester 2012 and has ended.

Organisation

  • Prof. Dr Susanne Prediger, Nadine Krägeloh, Didactics of Mathematics (Faculty of Mathematics)
  • Dr Erkan Özdil, Pembe Sahiner, German as a Second Language (Faculty of Cultural Studies)

Content

Learning mathematics at school requires pupils to develop age-appropriate language skills in German, the language of instruction, which can be summarised as mother tongue skills in German. These skills are the prerequisite for comprehending technical texts and learning and understanding technical language structures at school.

Many pupils of non-German mother tongue do not have these prerequisites. They are confronted with the challenge of a lesson in which the subject matter is not self-explanatory, but has to be developed linguistically in a (technical) language that is partly inaccessible to them.

The four-hour seminar with project character focuses not only on the subject-related but also on the linguistic mediation and learning perspective for pupils of non-German origin in mathematics lessons in grades 7 and 8. In the seminar, strategies are to be developed and tested that enable a differentiation between subject-related and linguistic skills (diagnostics). In the course of the knowledge gained, possible procedures and methods of didactic processing of subject-related texts will be developed. The aim is to enable students to access mathematical content and procedures linguistically and to promote "subject linguistic skills". The basis for this is language data empirically collected by the participants in schools. The seminar is led by two staff members from mathematics didactics and German. The number of participants is limited to 30.

Possibilities of crediting: The double seminar can be credited in one module each in mathematics and German and then counts as 2 x 2 SWS (or if desired only in one of them).