When asked about their goals, students learning a foreign language generally say they want to speak the language. Despite the value placed on speaking, however, various studies on the foreign language competence of Swiss school students reveal that many learners have difficulty in meeting the learning outcomes set for spoken language (Peyer et al. 2016, Wiedenkeller/Lenz 2019).

The aim of this project is the empirically-based development of assessments to test the profession-specific language skills in teachers of French, English and Italian as a foreign language in primary and secondary schools.

In collaboration with the University of Teacher Education St. Gallen (PHSG) and the Scuola universitaria professionale della Svizzera Italiana (SUPSI)  

In the spring of 2017, the CDIP/EDK assessed for the first time the basic skills in the first foreign language of schoolchildren at the end of primary school. On the basis of this assessment, the “Passepartout cantons” (the six cantons on the French-German language border) investigated how well the targets were achieved in French. The Research Centre on Multilingualism had the responsibility of developing test tasks for this purpose, and the project Task Lab was conducted in the scope...

Project conducted by the University of Teacher Education Schaffhausen (PHSH) and the University of Teacher Education Graubünden (PHGR) Texts in the social sciences at schools are often difficult even for children with average scholastic abilities; weak learners or children who speak German as a second language are over-challenged. Consequently, internally differentiated texts – i.e. different versions of the same content – are necessary to create an inclusive learning environment....

In collaboration with the Federal Statistical Office (FSO)

In the interest of advancing multilingualism in public services, the Swiss Confederation is legally bound to promoting federal employees' language skills in Switzerland's official languages. The divisions within the Federal Administration are obligated to ensure that all employees have sufficient knowledge of a second official language and that persons in a leadership role additionally have passive skills in a third official language. To implement these directives, the Federal Administration...

This literature review aims to present an overview of scientific research on the social, political and linguistic issues of language census by analysing international works conducted in various sociopolitical and sociolinguistic contexts. The purpose is to highlight the complexity of documenting languages as required for each census when quantifying information on respondents’ language practices.

This project aims to describe the development of productive writing skills in children with a Portuguese immigration background living in Switzerland (in the language of origin and in the language of instruction). It is based on data collected as part of the project Language of origin and language at school: are language skills transferable? (HLC) from the work programme 2011-2015 by the Research Centre on Multilingualism. The project will be divided into three stages:

If the aim is to measure how well learners can actually use a foreign language, then competence-oriented testing with near-authentic tasks is the method of choice. There is, however, a need for renewal in the design of such test tasks, especially because real-world language use often uses electronic channels. Chat, Internet searches and the like are part of everyday life. In addition, computer-based testing has increasingly become the norm in recent years, especially in the field of...