German as a foreign language and multilingual education in Brazil and in Europe

Abstract

This work gathers and compares research reports published in Brazil and in Germany which deal with multilingual constellations, in which German is one of the three or more spoken or learned languages in the analyzed context. It is a bibliographical research of quantitative character, inasmuch as the number of articles published on the theme in the last ten years is considered, and also of qualitative character, for consonance and dissonance points between the articles and recent theoretical recommendations are sought, as well as consonance and dissonance points among the articles themselves. First of all, a link among three key points of the multilingual education is established. Then a general overview of the analyzed articles is presented, followed by three sections in which the key points are confronted with the articles where each one of them is approached. Thereon, perspectives of German teaching in multilingual contexts of other countries are discussed. The closing remarks resume some theoretical points highlighted throughout the text and present suggestions for improving German teaching in Brazil

Keywords

• multilingualism
• language politics
• multilingual education
• teacher training