FUNDamental ENGlish in early plurilingual learning settings: inventory, competence development, insights for designing learning (2009-2012) The FUNDENG project is documenting and analyzing English as a second language in a classroom context at a secondary school level. For our current corpus, we are collecting and transcribing video data from plurilingual learners in a multilingual setting in Luxembourg. Multilingual development has been given much interdisciplinary attention over the past decade. Since it is a developing research area, tools from different theoretical frameworks are put to the test. At the University of Luxembourg we combine interactional approaches (e.g. Conversational Analysis) and grammatical acquisition to analyze our data. One of our goals is to refine, consolidate and develop approaches to studying multilingualism. Project leader: Ass. Prof. Dr. Gudrun Ziegler Research team: Dr. Neiloufar Family Natalia Durus Research partner: Olcay Sert (University of Newcastle)

1. Language Use of Plurilingual Luxemburgish Children
Gudrun Ziegler, Marnie Ludwig, Neiloufar Family & Natalia Durus
University of Luxembourg
Luxembourgish: Situation The Corpus Research Issues
Luxembourgish - contact language involving German and 1) Classroom interaction in maths classes over a First study to focus on the development of
French - declared national language 1984 period of 6 months, official language of instruction: Luxembourgish as a learner language, focus on
Language in extension, e.g., most administrative/ German, involving Luxembourgish and 2) Interview - learner profiles of Luxembourgish
educational/press writing is done in German or French data with six children: Questions on extracurricular
- grammatical features of learners' Luxembourgish
Language standards of Luxembourgish under debate activities, school life, and language use in and
(e.g., determiners, negation, plural marking)
outside of classroom
Use of language increasing important (e.g., citizenship, - interactional features (e.g., code-switching, self-
potential schooling subject) Ages 7-8, heterogenous linguistic backgrounds
initiations)
Luxembourgish as mandatory language in pre-school - What measures (e.g., MLU) are appropriate to study
contexts, "relevant" non-taught language in school Coded for morphological and interactional features Luxembourgish in development at the critical period
How to qualify language development given the current Tracing of language development and interactional when schooling begins ? (FLA vs. SLA)
situation of Luxembourgish situatedness - What kind of errors can we identify? How do they
relate to first and second language acquisition in
related languages (e.g., German)?
Profiles of Luxembourgish in Development: MLU Analysis Grammatical features: Determiners
Using MLU as a measure of language Determiners in Luxembourgish take case, number, and gender
development (following Brown, 1973,
CHILD MLU m MLUw MLU s
Four types of errors are attested in the data:
an dann * lehrer kommen an dann huet * gesot
Emilia 1.1 1.2 1.5
Dauster, 2007, Ziegler/Dauster 2004) and then teacher come&PRES-3PL and then have&PRES-3SG said
[target: and the teacher comes and he said]
Bernardo 1.75 1.2 2.5 * = determiner missing! ! ! ! ! ! ! [from Stephane]
Because of age and developing literacies ! Absence of determiner ech ginn op * schoul
Kerstin 2.2 2.2 3.3
(e.g., beginning of schooling), test different
I go on school
! Preposition and determiner target: ech ginn an dʼschoul bei dei grouss bierch do
Mario 4.3 4.3 6.1 I go to the school near the&PL big&PL mountain&SG there
MLU values: morphemes, words, and * = determiner missing! [from Mario] target: bei den groussen bierch do
Maurice 5.7 5.7 7.2 near the big mountain there! [from Stephane]
syllables ! Plural marking and determiner dat ass eng&FEM land&MASC
Stephan 9.4 9.4 12.6
that is a country
! Gender marking and determiner target: dat ass en&MASC land&MASC
that is a country ! [from Mario]
Three profiles from MLU values with identification of transition stages (cf. MLU
values per count unit) - from lowest to highest score in language production:
Profile 1: Kerstin, Bernardo, Emilia Discussion and Conclusions
Profile 2: Mario, Maurice* Results suggest three profiles in learner varieties but identification of transition stage
Profile 3: Stephane, Maurice* which needs further analysis (cf. which grammatical features pertain to which profile,
* makres transition stage, taking MLU of morphemes places Maurice in profile 3 especially at transition stage?)
Discussion of MLU (with varying count units) as measuring instrument in the givne
context
gudrun.ziegler@uni.lu, kiru103@gmail.com, neiloufar.family@uni.lu, Systematics of grammatical features and 1) orientation towards norm of Luxembourgish
natalia.durus@uni.lu! ! ! ! ! ! ! http:/
! /dica-lab.org/acquisition/ (or other language) in learners and 2) interactional situatedness of grammatical features
(e.g., "online effect" in plural marking; determiners)