Designing writing arrangements that foster interlingual transfer and individual learning processes in foreign language lessons in year 6 of primary school.

In quadrilingual Switzerland, lessons in two foreign languages are compulsory from the primary level up to the end of lower secondary schooling. In general, Swiss curricula are rooted in a multilingual teaching and learning concept that is designed to exploit the transfer potential of interlingual resources. However, realising measures to foster this transfer during actual lessons is a complex undertaking; indeed, major differences in individual learner ability to transfer writing strategies from language to language must be accommodated, and some pedagogical methods have proven effective only for certain groups of learners. In this project, a study is carried out in two year 6 classes in the Canton of Aargau to deepen knowledge about supporting pupils with diverse learning abilities transfer genre-specific text procedures and writing strategies from English into French.

The two main research questions are as follows: 

• What features must be included in a teaching/learning arrangement designed for groups with heterogeneous learning abilities that builds on genre-specific writing procedures and strategies in English (the first foreign language) and that promotes targeted interlingual transfer into French (the second foreign language)? 
• What individual learning processes for genre-specific text procedures, writing strategies and interlingual transfer are observed in pupils with heterogeneous linguistic and cognitive abilities when the teaching/learning arrangement is put into practice?