The Institute of multilingualism compiled a structured bibliography on the characteristics of foreign language teaching in Swiss schools for the project ‘Review of the Foreign Language Concept in Primary and Secondary Schools in Basel-Landschaft’. In particular, publications from 2011–2025 were considered, focusing on the following aspects of foreign language teaching:

The project “How much longer until B2?” investigates the time needed to attain a targeted level in a foreign language, for instance in organisations associated with the Swiss federal government. 

The increased linguistic and cultural diversity of pupils (OECD, 2018) and the implementation of an inclusive education system (Federal Constitution, Art. 2, para. 3, 8 para. 1 and 2) are leading to greater heterogeneity in mainstream primary school classes.

This project, co-funded by the Empiris Foundation, aims to describe the evolution of the use of five common verbs in French as a second language by young migrant students. Our analyses focus on the Corpus FrOMi, which brings together recordings of spontaneous oral productions by 10 beginner students in French on their first day of school over a period of four academic years.

In quadrilingual Switzerland, lessons in two foreign languages are compulsory from the primary level up to the end of lower secondary schooling. In general, Swiss curricula are rooted in a multilingual teaching and learning concept that is designed to exploit the transfer potential of interlingual resources.

Language is what distinguishes human beings from all other species. However, its evolutionary origins remain poorly understood. In addition, today's communicative environment is being reshaped by digitisation and artificial intelligence: the way we learn and use language has changed, raising the question of how language might develop in the future.

Immigrant families need to make choices on which language(s) to favor in their everyday life. Those choices have been extensively investigated in recent decades under the label of family language policy (FLP). Early research has focused on explicit and overt language planning in Western middle-class families, a focus that has been criticized for being too elitist, while more recent research focuses on the role of FLP as a coping and defence mechanism, especially in contexts of trauma...

The placement of learners in literacy courses according to skill level is often faulty, and the resulting heterogeneity in such classes poses difficulties for both teachers and learners; in addition, the inefficient use of government funds earmarked for integration is also problematic.

Calls for a stronger pedagogical connection between teaching the language of schooling and teaching foreign languages have been made for years, as it is believed learners might benefit from the potential synergies. However, language lessons continue to focus largely on a single language. The SWIKO triple S project therefore investigates whether similarities between the language of schooling and foreign languages can be utilized to facilitate and enhance learning.