Sprachsensibilität im Geschichtsunterricht

The essay examines chances and constraints of methods used to facilitate students’ learning processes concerning academic language proficiency in History and/or German. First, the author highlights the crucial role of language for historical learning purposes on the basis of real-world classroom observations. Hereby, she focusses on both the students’ understanding and production of (oral/written) texts. Next, her classroom experiences are backed by current research results on students’ academic language problems. Against this background, the author outlines the approaches she has implemented in her classroom work in order to enhance her students’ subject-specific language use (e.g. chunks), such as micro-scaffolding. Whether the approaches have met the students’ demands, is investigated on the basis of their oral and written products. Last but not least, the didactic impact of the classroom work at issue will be discussed in connection with pragmatic functional recommendations. Finally, the essay points to the need for political support and further research with re-gard to the language use and contents in the subject History.