Understand better! Follow better! Perform better!
What is educational language?
"Educational language" is a way of using language that is shaped by the goals and traditions of educational institutions. It serves to impart technical knowledge and skills and at the same time the practice of recognized forms of professional and civic communication. (Reich 2008)
Educational language is the medium for absorbing and expressing abstract and complex content linguistically. The school requires its students to deal with new, unknown and abstract topics. At the same time, it requires a conceptual order of linguistic contributions and linguistic accuracy in detail. This ability is necessary in order to cope with the task of understanding, processing, thinking through and formulating that children and young people have to deal with. Language skills decide on the educational career, graduate degrees and future careers.
If students speak German well in everyday life, this does not mean that they understand everything in school - they need educational language skills for this. Basically, one can differentiate between three major areas of language use: everyday language, school language and educational language (with technical language).
“ Everyday language ” is the name given to the language that is spoken in the children's social environment and in public life. Jim Cummins (cf. Cummins, 2001, p. 58ff.)
“School language ” is the name given to the language that is used in schools or educational institutions.
" Educational language " is a complex, situation-related language and is referred to by Cummins as "CALP" (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency) (cf. Cummins, 2001, p. 58ff.) .
Pupils need skills in the language of education and in the school language. These competencies have to be learned together with the technical language of the respective subject areas, which, according to Cummins, usually takes several years - far too long for success in school (cf. Cummins, 2001, p. 58ff.).
"For educational success it is crucial that the children learn in school to pay attention to the differences in everyday language and the language of education and to actively use these differences in their language behavior, but also in their understanding of language."
Ingrid Gogolin
"Almost 10% of the population in the Federal Republic of Germany are foreigners" (Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, 2006).
"It is estimated that 50,000 foreign children are born in this country every year and around 30% of the next generation have a migration background ... and 20% of them grow up bilingual" (Belke & Conrady, 2005).
“The results of the international school performance study PISA from 2000 and 2003 are alarming. They prove that children with a migration background in Germany achieve poorer school results than German children and are thus educationally disadvantaged ” (Stanat & Christensen, 2007).