The development of German and English writing skills in a bilingual primary school in Germany

Abstract

The present study examined German and English writing skills of children who attended a partial German-English immersion program in a primary school in Germany. From Year 3 to Year 4 the children’ writing improved from level A1 to level A2 (according to the Common European Framework of References, Council of Europe, 2001) in the English writing test, and they obtained age-appropriate values in the German writing test in Years 3 and 4. The writing test conducted in Year 3 turned out to be a significant predictor for writing outcomes in the same language in Year 4. The children’s language background (i.e. minority vs. majority language background) and their gender did, on the other hand, not affect the test results in any year. On the whole, the results reported here suggest that in early partial immersion programs both majority and minority language children’s writing skills can develop in an age-appropriate way in the majority language as well as in the foreign language, which is used as the language of instruction in different schools subjects.