BiPeer

The project explored ways of supporting reading skills among Turkish-German bilingual primary school children using peer-learning methods. In such programmes, two children (i.e. peers) work together according to structured procedures. This project focused on the linguistic backgrounds and language use in peer-learning scenarios. When paired together, a bilingual child could benefit from the extensive vocabulary of a monolingual child in the language of schooling. If two bilingual children use both their languages while learning together, this could ease communication during the peer-learning process and potentially lead to improved comprehension.

The project examined these questions as part of a peer-learning intervention study with 164 monolingual German and bilingual Turkish-German 3rd and 4th graders. Three reading intervention groups were compared with three control groups in which the participants practiced arithmetic.

The pupils participated in 12 peer-learning training sessions, which took place twice a week in the afternoon for 45 minutes per session. With regard to reading, the training included reading in pairs with three reading strategies: clarification of word meanings, summary, and prediction. The arithmetic training comprised mental arithmetic and three strategies: compensation strategy, simplifying strategy, and indirect addition. During the sessions, the children took on alternate roles as tutor or tutee. Selected sessions were recorded.

Reading and arithmetic skills were tested before, during and immediately after the intervention and then again about six weeks later. Surveys of background characteristics, literacy and numeracy skills, language use and intelligence were also conducted.

Children who participated in the reading intervention improved their reading comprehension over the course of the training and significantly more than those who took part in the arithmetic intervention. Likewise, children who took part in the arithmetic intervention improved their use of calculation strategies and, again, more so than those children who participated in the reading intervention.

The language background does not appear to be relevant to learning achievement: bilingual children learn equally well with monolingual as with bilingual peers.

A beneficial effect of bilingual communication could be discerned in the arithmetic intervention: tandems that were permitted to make use of German and Turkish showed significantly higher improvement in calculation strategies than tandems that did not have this multilingual option.

Peer learning constitutes a promising approach in improving reading and arithmetic skills among bilingual primary school children. For contexts in which German, the majority language, is used exclusively for communication, it does not seem to matter whether bilinguals work with monolingual or bilingual peers. Other factors should therefore be brought into focus when it comes to group composition.

Peer learning presents a way of integrating heritage languages into regular classrooms without requiring any additional language skills from teachers. Bilingual communication (Turkish/German) during the learning process has no disadvantages for bilingual children and even seems to have benefits with regard to calculation strategies. Explicit encouragement (e.g. through games in Turkish) appears to lead to acceptance of Turkish in the learning process. Furthermore, explicit opportunities for integrating multilingualism in peer-learning settings should be developed together with the participating children.

Schastak, M., Reitenbach, V., Rauch. D. & Decristan, J. (2017). Türkisch-Deutsch bilinguale Interaktion beim Peer-Learning in der Grundschule: Selbstberichtete Gründe für die Annahme oder Ablehnung bilingualer Interaktionsangebote. In Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenchaft, 20(2), S. 213 – 235. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11618-017-0735-5

Schastak, M. (2020). Bilinguale Interaktion beim Peer-Learning in der Grundschule. Eine Mixed-MethodsStudie mit bilingual türkisch-deutschsprachig aufwachsenden Schüler*innen. Opladen, Berlin,Toronto : Verlag Barbara Budrich 2020, 457 S. - (Mehrsprachigkeit und Bildung; 4) - (Frankfurt am Main,Univ., Diss., 2019) - URN: urn:nbn:de:0111-pedocs-188217