Abstract
In our project, we have for the first time comprehensively researched the language repertoires of South Tyrolean middle and high school students from schools with Italian or German as the language of instruction and from schools in the Ladin valleys. One of the methods we developed within the project we would now like to disseminate to schools and teachers as a teaching method: the Language Village!
The Language Village is a method that allows students to test their multilingual competences. In groups of about four, they go through various stations in the Language Village, each station representing a situation that is as real as possible, in which the students have to solve a task or a problem: in a Russian restaurant, during a student exchange in France, or as a travel group in Prague. They can make use of their languages, dialects, body language, knowledge about language, objects present in the room and world knowledge.
The material was created for use with middle and high school students, but can also be adapted for elementary school or adults. The material is trilingual with German, Italian and English, while a short introductory text in German or Italian also provides insights into the background of the method.