Advancing multilingual didactics and assessment: Describing, activating and capturing linguistic repertoires in multilingual learning scenarios

In the multilingual region of South Tyrol there are increasing efforts to establish integrated language learning settings and multilingual curricula. However, these multilingual teaching approaches are facing the difficulty of promoting multilingual competences of students without being able to describe them in their entirety. Therefore, multilingual competences need to be fully operationalized, but neither traditional instruments of linguistic assessment nor standard European reference frameworks can do so. Even the most recent ones that offer a wide range of descriptors for multilingual competences and resources have not yet been empirically validated.

Within the project "RepertoirePluS", we have taken up this challenge by operationalizing and testing appropriate descriptors for a two-stage survey of linguistic repertoires. First, we carried out a questionnaire survey in schools of all three language groups to determine the linguistic repertoire of South Tyrolean pupils aged 12 to 15 and the extent to which they are aware of its potential. In a second step, we analyse how these students use their resources in the didactic scenario of a "language village" and how they activate their linguistic repertoires.

In our paper, we will present first results of the quantitative and qualitative data analysis and show that students' linguistic repertoires are very diverse and do not match the traditional curricula prototypical students' profiles. By building on the collection and description of individual linguistic repertoires, we will also provide impulses on how to integrate their strategic use in multilingual didactics for promoting the recognition and valorisation of multilingual competences.