Methods
Participants
Data are being collected at secondary schools (learners aged 10–18 years) in three German states (Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, North-Rhine-Westphalia) from academic and vocational schools (Hauptschule, Realschule, Gymnasium/Abitur-track), with a target sample of approximately 700 informants.
Tasks
Representing a range of communicative contexts, the tasks administered include both established (timed argumentative essay, picture description) and innovative task types (group discussion, elicitation of digital communication), with varying degrees of planning and interactivity.
In-class writing
Participants of all ages are given the following short essay prompt:
"Imagine that you have just received a message that you have won one million Euros in the national lottery. Write a text about what you would do with the money."
For students in grades 10-12, this task is supplemented with second more complex short essay prompt:
"Please write your opinion on the following statement: In our modern world, dominated by technology, science, and industrialization, there is no longer a place for dreaming and imagination."
Oral picture description
In a short individual recording session, participants are asked to describe what they see in the comic shown here:
Small group discussion
In groups of three to five, participants discuss the topics of family, friends and hobbies (in grades 5-12) and/or the question "What makes a good teacher?" (in grades 7-12)
Examples of questions used to lead the discussion include:
Which new hobby would you like to learn, and why? (grades 5-12)
Which activities do you like to do with your family, and which with your friends? (grades 5-12)
Who are you closer to: your family or your friends? Why is that the case? (grades 9-12)
What does your teacher do to help you learn new things? (grades 7-12)
What do you think: to what degree is it the teacher’s responsibility to make sure that their students are successful learners? (grades 9-12)
Digital communication
Participants send messages in the instant-messaging app Element.
Research assistants lead the conversation with questions such as:
What are your plans for this afternoon/for next weekend?
How has your day been so far?
Do you have any plans for the Christmas/summer holidays?
What’s the most fun thing you have done this school year so far?
Metadata
We collect an extensive set of metadata, based on a modified version of the questionnaire and procedure proposed by Möller (2017) and in line with the core L2 metadata scheme (Frey et al. 2023).
This comprises established test batteries assessing:
Educational history
Linguistic background
Language use across different social contexts (including exposure to English outside of school)
Motivation (FLM 3–6 R, FLM 7–13; Lohbeck & Petermann 2019; Petermann & Winkel 2015)
General and verbal cognitive abilities (AID-G; Kubinger & Hagenmüller 2019)
Analyses
After transcription and annotation, interactions between CAF components as well as the influence of contextual and learner variables will be assessed using mixed-effects regression modeling.
References
Frey JC, König A, Stemle EW, Paquot M (2023, August 30-September 2). A core metadata schema for L2 data. [Conference presentation] EuroSLA 32, Conference of the European Second Language Association, Birmingham, UK.
Kubinger, K. & Hagenmüller, B. (2019). Gruppentest zur Erfassung der Intelligenz auf Basis des AID. Hogrefe.
Lohbeck, A. & Petermann, F. (2019). Fragebogen zur Leistungsmotivation für Schülerinnen und Schüler der 3. bis 6. Klasse – Revision. Hogrefe.
Möller, V. (2017). Language Acquisition in CLIL and Non-CLIL Settings: Learner Corpus and Experimental Evidence on Passive Constructions. Benjamins.
Petermann, F. & Winkel, S. (2015). Fragebogen zur Leistungsmotivation für Schüler der 7. bis 13. Klasse. Pearson Harcourt.