Sinergia-Project of the Swiss National Science Foundation, no. 130457 This project examines dimensions of multilingualism that have heretofore received little attention in research. The question at the core of the project concerns how the areas of competence necessary for learning and using more than one language change and develop over the course of an individual’s lifetime. The linguistic areas considered incorporate the multifaceted nature of language acquisition and use, and cover...

In line with the growth of linguistically mediated knowledge in the neoliberal new economy, the international health care sector requires some of its workforce to be multilingual, reflecting an increasing multilingualization as a means of economic expansion and localization. Similar to other service-oriented industries that cater to an international audience, language skills and multilingual repertoires mean an added value to the products of health care providers. This invites us to...

The potential to learn foreign languages varies from one individual to the next and has been investigated by many researchers as of the early 1950s. Individuals’ ability to learn foreign languages relies on various elements that have been identified and grouped under the term language aptitude (ability to retrieve, identify and memorise sound sequences belonging to foreign languages, ability to identify meaningful common features etc.). Another area of the research focuses on emotional/personality...

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...

This research overview focuses on differences between individuals when it comes to results in learning foreign languages in school. The aim is to identify and discuss studies about factors responsible for differences in the potential to learn foreign languages from one individual to the next as well as the various tools designed to evaluate them (MLAT, LLAMA, CANAL-FT, FLCAS etc.). The research overview will be structured around the following themes: