How Can Multilingual Didactic Approaches Be Implemented in Practice?

An Example for Russian Language Teaching

Abstract

The aim of this theory-based best practice example is to demonstrate how the well-known Russian birthday song by Gena the Crocodile can be applied to classroom settings in order to promote multilingual education as well as the individual multilingualism of pupils. Moreover, it is meant to raise a general awareness for linguistic similarities and differences. In addition to Russian, the teaching example makes use of different foreign languages that are frequently taught at schools such as English, Italian, Spanish and French. Besides those, the best practice example also takes the pupils’ first or heritage languages into account. The example follows the pre-, while-and post-structure, and is aimed at the language level A2+. The ready-to-use worksheet is preceded by a theoretical comment and didactic considerations regarding its implementation into the Russian language classroom. The answer keys are provided at the end of this contribution.