Ich kann keine andere Sprache verwenden : A survey of attitudes towards multilingualism in German integration courses for adult migrants

Abstract

Abstract Integration courses in Germany started in 2005 as a consequence of the newly promulgated immigration law, the so-called Zuwanderungsgesetz, a set of laws that restructured the 2005 legislation on foreigners in the Federal Republic of Germany with the first version of the Residence Act and the Freedom of Movement Act. Since then, although these laws have experienced changes in structure and audience, what has not changed is the presence of multilingual competences in classrooms in German as the norm. The mere presence of multilingualism in the courses does not automatically equal multilingual pedagogy. In this article, we present a quantitative study participants concerning the attitudes towards multilingualism and multilingual pedagogy of teachers in courses of German as a Second Language. The results indicate that one third of the participants present a consistent and marked “monolingual habitus” (Gogolin 1994; 1997), possibly influencing how open they are to including multilingual practices in their teaching. The remaining two thirds indicate openness to a multilingual orientation, but still engage in predominantly monolingual teaching practices: a contradicting stance in need of further investigation.