DDS – Die Deutsche Schule: Issue The Development of Multilingual Writing Skills During Secondary School – a Linguistic-pragmatic Perspective

To master writing as a key to educational success, students need to understand the requirements of a variety of written tasks in different contexts to effectively utilize the linguistic resources necessary to complete the task in writing. The present study aims to provide insights into how the linguistic-pragmatic writing ability of task mastery develops in multilingual repertoires of students with and without a migration background at secondary level. We analyzed test data on multilingual writing skills from the study “Multilingual development: a longitudinal perspective (MEZ)”. The results of the present study show that the secondary school students (n = 1773) exhibit an increasing development of language-pragmatic writing skills over time in all languages. We identified different language-specific development trajectories and patterns at different ability levels. Monolingual and multilingual students showed similar developmental courses. Differences were found between the languages regarding task mastery, with German being the best and French being the worst. The results offer insights into multilingual writing development and emphasize the importance of its institutional support.

Keywords
foreign languages, heritage languages, German, Turkish, Russian, English, French, multiliteracy, language development