Language learning and German education policy
Bilinguals have better maths skills

Language learning trains the brain. Learning two languages at an early age develops language skills in general. But bilingual kids also do better in other cognitive subjects – like mathematics. Professors Michaela Sambanis and Heiner Böttger explain why a paradigm shift is needed and how to make it work.

By Dr. Paula Scholeman and Stefanie Eisenreich

Mr Böttger, we speak German in Germany, so all children have to learn German first at school. Isn't that rock-solid reasoning?

Heiner Böttger: We often act in Germany as though all children learned German as their first language. But their first language is usually their mother tongue, which isn’t always German. Using imaging techniques, the linguist Rita Franceschini has found that at the “pre-linguistic” age of two months, children growing up bilingual already know there’s something like a daddy language and a mummy language. They can't name them, of course, but different action potentials fire in the brain when their parents speak their respective languages. Incidentally, according to Franceschini, children raised in families speaking a distinct dialect like Schwyzerdütsch (Swiss German) alongside the standard language are basically growing up bilingual too.

What does this multilingualism mean?


Univ.Prof. Dr. Michaela Sambanis | © Sambanis Michaela Sambanis: In areas of Germany with lots of Turkish or Greek families, for example, schoolchildren have classes in their mother tongue once or twice a week so they won’t forget it and, above all, so they’ll learn to read and write in that language. But those languages are usually kept separate from German and the other foreign languages taught at school. This is a problem, because nurturing foreign language acquisition calls for an interdisciplinary approach that involves working the language into other subjects in order to tie multilingualism into various activities.

Heiner Böttger: If we don’t acknowledge their multilingualism, we’re basically cutting these children off from their culture as well as linguistically impoverishing them. After all, they’ve already undergone cognitive development in acquiring their mother tongue. The children need a language to contrast with others. And that’s their mother tongue. It’s important to read aloud to them, and have them take part in classes and other activities, in that language. If we do that, then, according to the latest findings, these kids will potentially prove better language learners than those growing up monolingual and also, on average, better mathematicians, too.
 

Hang on there: so you're saying bilingual children are potentially better at maths than monolinguals?

© Böttger Heiner Böttger: Yes, this conclusion is drawn from a project called Lernen in zwei Sprachen - Bilinguale Grundschule Bayern ("Learning in Two Languages: Bilingual Primary School in Bavaria"), which I designed and supervised. The project involves children from the first grade and up learning in two languages, German and English. They have roughly nine to eleven hours of classes in other subjects that are taught in English. For five years, we tested them in maths, German and English to see how they compared to children all over Germany.

And the results?

Heiner Böttger: There’s no dip in their scores in German, even though they get up to eleven hours less subject teaching in German. On the contrary: learning in two languages improves language proficiency and sensitivity. These children also have better mathematical skills. They outperform the national average in maths on the standardized comparative test DEMAT – and not just by a little, but significantly.
  
How would you explain this phenomenon in neurological terms?

Heiner Böttger: It has something to do with the plasticity of the brain, in other words the formation and reinforcement of neuronal structures thanks to the greater demands of processing two languages and more rapid cognitive development as a result. It doesn't matter at all which two languages you take: German and Polish, German and Schwyzerdütsch – the bilingual setting leads to a boost in cognitive performance and, consequently, to the children being markedly better at maths.
 
Isn't there a risk of asking too much of the kids? Especially when it comes to more complex languages?

Michaela Sambanis: In one project at a primary school, we used the same content and activities in English and French. There was no sign of French being too demanding on the kids. Some could even express themselves in a more complex way in French than in English. Naturally, French poses a greater challenge to a child's brain at first – what with two articles, un and une, instead of just, for example. But the brain can process this if it is presented methodically and age-appropriately, as a fun challenge. With the right method, young learners can take on the challenge, master it and grow from it. In a word, multilingualism makes for greater cognitive performance. So how does our education system need to change in order to put this insight into practice?
 
Heiner Böttger: Our outdated system of primary school, middle school and high school – even if they’re called by other names – is a hierarchical, rigidly partitioned and compartmentalized educational system that makes for unequal educational opportunities even from an early age. Dividing children up into classes by age is also obsolete, according to the latest findings, and has been for quite some time. 
We need a paradigm shift. Basically starting in kindergarten. But how are preschool teachers trained? After special training at a polytechnic or university, preschool teachers ought to know more and have more skills, they ought to be better at integrating languages. Special training in language teaching ought to be on the curriculum to make bilingual preschool possible.
 

Does training for primary and secondary school teachers also need to change so they can handle multilingualism?

Heiner Böttger: Yes, but it’s not happening. All teachers should actually be trained in teaching German as a second or foreign language. If only to be able to explain their own language to themselves as Germans and to teach it. We need to equip teachers to develop different, more individualized activities and corresponding testing formats much earlier on. Because all we’re doing now is teaching kids everything very explicitly and then – I'm exaggerating now, as we sometimes have to in didactics – using cloze text exercises to check how much they’ve learned. Most schoolwork merely serves to test and mark reproductive learning. But what about creativity? What about the transfer? For that we need a whole different kind of exercise, task formats that involve an implicit approach and allow for a form of active performance. But we still cling to the old, apparently time-proven forms of assessment.
 

So we need to change the school system, teacher training, and task and testing formats. What else is needed for a paradigm shift?

Heiner Böttger: The parents are the key to it all. But we’re not getting the parents on board, we’re not explaining to them how much good it would do their kids to learn two languages. This is why a real paradigm shift is not in the offing yet. We know how to get there, but we’re unable to drive that knowledge home to society at large. One exception, though, is a big stride forward in Bavaria, where bilingual primary schools have caught on in a big way. This is a quantum leap, if you ask me.

Michaela Sambanis: The whole nation is doing what virologists tell them to nowadays. And someday soon, hopefully they’ll notice: Hey, there are people doing research on the theory and methods of teaching. Let's hear what they have to say and take them seriously too!

Interview partner:

Heiner Böttger is professor of English didactics at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt.
His research interests currently focus on multilingualism and the language educational neurosciences.

Univ.Prof. Dr. Michaela Sambanis holds the chair for the Didactics of English at the Freie Universität Berlin. She combines neuroscience with didactics and breaks down bodies of knowledge for practical application.