Abstract
The contribution presents the methodology of a longitudinal study on the development of communicative skills of secondary school students in their L1, L2 and L3 respectively. The research was undertaken in the Autonomous Province of Bolzano, a region characterised by official trilingualism (German, Italian, Ladin). The mentioned students’ linguistic repertoires are however more diverse, including English (L3) and other languages for some of the pupils. This contribution presents some of the tools applied for data collection in the following contexts: the assessment of language skills as well as ethnographic observation in the classroom, semi-structured interviews and questionnaires.