Wie entwickeln sich die kognitiven und die rezeptiven zweitsprachlichen Fähigkeiten in Immersionsschulen und Regelschulen? Und in welcher Beziehung stehen diese Faktoren in den verschiedenen Lernumgebungen zueinander? Diese Fragen galt es mit der hier vorgelegten Arbeit zu beantworten. Zu diesem Zweck wurden auf Basis eines quasiexperimentellen, longitudinalen Forschungsdesigns und der statistischen Auswertung des hieraus gewonnenen Datensatzes die Testergebnisse von 104 Proband*innen aus Regelschulen und Immersionsschulen untersucht.

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In her article "The Beat 'Pad'" Heike Mlakar analyzes the importance of Joan Vollmer's and Hettie Jones's Manhattan apartments as centers for the upcoming avant-garde movement of the time in order to understand the meaning of "home" in postwar bohemianism in general and specifically for female Beats. In sensationalized late 1950s films and in print media, the Beats were associated with low-rent Beat "pads" in poor urban areas, in which wild all-night parties were held—sites of drug use, destitution, and sexual promiscuity. Both Vollmer and Jones contributed greatly to the formation of the Beat Generation by providing the perfect setting for the flourishing of the artistic scene that would change the postwar literary scene forever: it was here, in Vollmer's Apartment 51, that the cornerstone for a new era in literature was laid, as Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Kerouac lived there simultaneously from 1945 to 1946. Similarly, the "pads" Hettie Jones shared with then-husband Amiri Baraka served a similar function, namely to build up a homogeneous Beat identity.

In recent decades several studies have demonstrated that dual language use and socioeconomic status (SES) are powerful experiences that affect children’s linguistic and cognitive development (Bialystok 2017). The combined influence of these experiences has received much less attention although they typically co-occur: Children’s day-to-day experiences are rooted in their language background and their family’s socioeconomic status. The few notable studies that examined how children adapt to these experiences have shown bilingual effects on cognition in both low and high socioeconomic settings (e.g., Engel de Abreu et al. 2012). The present study explores the role of bilingual education and family socioeconomic status in the development of L1 and L2 abilities of primary school children. More specifically, we focused on the combined effects of bilingual education and SES and parenting style using parental education level as well as home enrichment as potential mediating variables. To do so, we aimed to answer the question of how L1 and L2 skills develop over time in regular EFL and bilingual educational settings and examined the combined effects of school type and SES in these contexts. Participants (N=52) were students at regular (German) and bilingual (German-English) primary schools in Germany. In a longitudinal study, we used school type and SES as between-subjects factors, and receptive L1 (German) and L2 (English) vocabulary and grammar as within-subject factors. Data on family SES based on parental education level and home enrichment were elicited using a parental questionnaire. Preliminary statistical analyses included repeated measures ANOVAs and multiple linear regression. The analyses revealed that the bilingual education group outperformed their peers at monolingual schools where the students learned English as a foreign language, and consequently, had much less contact with the English language (2 lessons per week) regarding all L2 linguistic variables while their L1 development did not differ significantly from that of students in mainstream monolingual education. Furthermore, the results suggest that family SES measured by parental education level as well as home enrichment predicted L1 development in students at monolingual schools, however, they had a much lesser and statistically insignificant impact on both L1 and L2 development in bilingual school settings. These results demonstrate that the benefits of a bilingual education program extend to children from different family socioeconomic backgrounds and that bilingual programs may help level the playing field for children of low family socioeconomic status.

The present study aimed to enhance the understanding of the spelling processes used by young German-speaking learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). Specifically, we sought to (1) compare the children’s accuracy in spelling English real words versus pseudowords to elucidate the role of lexical and sublexical knowledge, and (2) determine which cognitive (phonological awareness, phonological short-term memory, working memory, nonverbal intelligence) and linguistic skills (English receptive grammar and vocabulary) underlie learners’ spelling abilities and misspellings (phonological and orthographic). We followed participants (N = 101) for two years, from the beginning of grade 3 to the end of grade 4. Cognitive skills and linguistic abilities were determined using standardized assessment procedures. Our results indicate that the learners in our study demonstrated greater accuracy in spelling English real words compared to pseudowords. English grammar knowledge significantly predicted real word and pseudoword spelling accuracy, as well as the number of phonological errors, which was the predominant error category. English vocabulary knowledge was a predictor for real word spelling, while nonverbal intelligence predicted pseudoword spelling accuracy. Phonological short-term memory positively predicted the number of orthographic errors (phonologically plausible misspellings but lacking orthographic conventions).

The present study aimed to enhance the understanding of the spelling processes used by young German-speaking learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). Specifically, we sought to (1) compare the children’s accuracy in spelling English real words versus pseudowords to elucidate the role of lexical and sublexical knowledge, and (2) determine which cognitive (phonological awareness, phonological short-term memory, working memory, nonverbal intelligence) and linguistic skills (English receptive grammar and vocabulary) underlie learners’ spelling abilities and misspellings (phonological and orthographic). We followed participants (N = 101) for two years, from the beginning of grade 3 to the end of grade 4. Cognitive skills and linguistic abilities were determined using standardized assessment procedures. Our results indicate that the learners in our study demonstrated greater accuracy in spelling English real words compared to pseudowords. English grammar knowledge significantly predicted real word and pseudoword spelling accuracy, as well as the number of phonological errors, which was the predominant error category. English vocabulary knowledge was a predictor for real word spelling, while nonverbal intelligence predicted pseudoword spelling accuracy. Phonological short-term memory positively predicted the number of orthographic errors (phonologically plausible misspellings but lacking orthographic conventions).