German funding in kindergarten: Linguistic opportunities for everyone!

German funding in kindergarten: Linguistic opportunities for everyone!

Wien, Österreich - Education experts raise the alarm: In order to improve German funding in kindergartens, more staff is required! Verena Blaschitz, linguist from the University of Vienna, indicates that the key to successful language support lies in the right relationship between specialists and children. Currently, the groups are often overcrowded, which disabled individual support for children. Blaschitz demands that the number of specialists have to be increased so that they can respond more specifically to the children's linguistic needs. Your findings are based on experiences from practice and specific educational models that take into account not only the language skills, but also the cultural diversity of the children, including the explanations of Carina Schubert-Wachter, which works with the organization "Teach for Austria".

important measures for language support

Schubert-Wachter emphasizes that almost all children with little knowledge of German could successfully switch to school in their kindergarten group, where additional language supporters worked. It emphasizes that access to high -quality educational offers is decisive and that the longer length of stay in kindergarten has a positive impact on language development. "Important is more time with the language, regardless of whether these are more years or more hours," she explains and points out that individual language games contributed significantly to improvement.

The problem is also reinforced by the existing Mika-D test system, which has been used to classify students in German funding classes since 2019. Blaschitz criticizes that this test does not accurately record the actual language skills of the children and that a reliable assessment of the students is difficult. It therefore demands that both the training of the staff and the existing tests must be revised in order to meet the children's language needs. In an increasingly multilingual society, it is crucial that language support is supported by specialists who are fully trained in these areas, including the findings from the source of academia.edu.