Hochdeutsch im Kindergarten

Mathilde Gyger (Liestal)

Abstract

According to the results of the Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA) the linguistic competencies of Swiss students need to be improved. Currently, there is a strong tendency to ban local Swiss-German dialects from Swiss schools, including nursery-schools, and to replace them by Standard High-German more or less completely.

Since parts of the Swiss-German speaking population have strong reservations about High-German or at least the use of High-German in nursery-schools, school authorities look for scientific support. Indeed linguistic research has shown favourable results for the pre-school use of High-German: German speaking children are encouraged to use High-German freely and spontaneously. Migrant children benefit regarding fluency and proficiency in German as a second language.

The following article comments on some steps taken by school-authorities and summarizes the current discussions on the part of educational and linguistic research in Switzerland.

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