| Abstract |
The subject of the present PhD thesis is the study of the bilingual speech of Greek primary school children in Germany as it is produced during the Greek language classes. The focus of the research is put on the code-switching during the language class and its importance for the teaching of the Greek language.
The study has been conducted at a peripheral Greek language school in the State of Baden-Württemberg in Germany. The research aimed at the recording and the description of the bilingual speech of the pupils in the “natural setting” during the Greek language lessons, without the planning of specific teaching interventions, but according to the teaching material which is suggested for and used in these classes.
The present research followed the interpretive research paradigm of the naturalistic approach working within the frames of Grounded Theory and that of Practitioner Research. During the research the teacher had a dual role, that of the educator and that of the researcher. On the whole, the research data consists of 87 hours of recorded teaching lessons, as well as of questionnaires from the pupils giving information about their individual and linguistic profile. The processing and analysis of the research data has been carried out in the methodological frame of Grounded Theory.
The research brought out features about the way the pupils and the teacher use code-switching (CS) in class during the lessons, as well as features about the reactions of the teacher to the code-switching of the pupils. It became obvious, that the pupils sometimes make obligatory use of CS and that they use CS mainly as a communication and learning strategy. Respectively, the research data showed that the teacher makes also obligatory use of CS and uses CS as a communication and teaching strategy. The reactions of the teacher to the CS of the pupils were of three patterns: passive reaction, active encouraging reaction and active discouraging reaction.
The research data and the conclusions allow suggestions about the didactic-methodological utilization of CS during the teaching of the Greek language in Germany. We suggest that the teachers should incorporate didactically into their lessons some code-switchings of the pupils, depending on the situation and the pupils’ age, in the following ways: 1) in asking them to find, individually or in cooperation, the Greek rendering of the word or the phrase, 2) in comparing contrastively some features of the two languages on the level of grammatical terminology or conceptual content, 3) in discussing about the CS on its own and in topicalising the pupils’ bilingualism. Finally, two more suggestions for the teaching are made, which are indirectly connected to the pupils’ CS, but directly to their bilingualism. So, we suggest on the one hand to topicalise mistakes based on transfers and on the other hand to teach more systematically the vocabulary.
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