Digitaler Sprachaustausch zwischen deutsch- und französischsprachigen Schweizer Schulklassen – Einblicke in die didaktische Umsetzung und die wissenschaftliche Begleitung

Abstract

This article focuses on a development project in which a digital language exchange between German- and French-speaking Swiss secondary school classes is carried out and evaluated. In particular, the questions of how the participating students evaluate the digital language exchange and which media-didactic conclusions can be drawn from this for a successful implementation of digital communication and collaboration formats in foreign language teaching in times of the post-pandemic will be investigated. Accordingly, the article refers in particular to the two guiding questions of the anthology, how future intercultural encounters can look like and which digital competencies are required on the part of foreign language teachers for this. First, the significance of real and digital language exchanges is discussed, based on educational policy demands and foreign language didactic positions. Subsequently, the learning effects are presented in more detail, which foreign language research has been able to empirically prove in the past decades. The following chapter deals with the didactic design and embedding of language exchanges, which has been proven to have a decisive influence on the growth of linguistic and intercultural competencies as well as on the language learning motivation of the exchange participants. Afterwards, a teaching unit will be presented in more detail, which contains numerous elements of digital collaboration and communication, and which was used in the context of the development project discussed here. Among other things, this teaching unit serves to help the exchange participants get to know each other. Accordingly, videos introducing oneself are to be created and uploaded to a learning platform. These videos are then watched and analyzed by the respective partner students. Furthermore, video conferences as well as chat communications between the students will take place on given topics. The final part of the lesson is the collaborative creation of a virtual learning poster, which deals with socio-cultural characteristics of the two Swiss language regions. At the end of the paper, first insights into the results of the online survey conducted with the French learners participating in the digital language exchange are presented discussed and finally a preliminary conclusion is drawn about successful and critical aspects of digital collaboration and communication in the French classroom.