The MuViT Authoring Tool: Fostering Communicative Competences of Young Language Learners

Viviane Lohe, Laura Armbrust & Daniela Elsner
Frankfurt

Der Artikel beschreibt die Ziele und den Hintergrund des von der EU geförderten Projekts MuViT, im Rahmen dessen eine mehrsprachige Software für Grundschulkinder entwickelt wurde. Dabei liegt der Fokus auf dem im Rahmen des Projekts entwickelten Authoring Tool, mit welchem Schülerinnen und Schüler eigene digitale Bilderbücher in verschiedenen Sprachen erstellen und gestalten können. Es werden methodische Möglichkeiten zum Umgang mit dem Authoring Tool im Fremdsprachenunterricht aufgezeigt, konkrete Lernaufgaben vorgeschlagen, und erläutert, welche Kompetenzen dabei erreicht werden können.

MuViT (Multilingual Virtual Talking Books) is an EU-funded project that has taken into account the most prominent qualities of our postmodern society: diversity of languages and cultures on the one hand, and the advent of New Media on the other. Our pupils are growing up in this modern world and therefore new concepts of teaching and learning are required “in order to prepare [them] to actively engage in a socially diverse, globalized, and technological world” (Elsner, 2011: 30). Against this background, the MuViT consortium, with partners from Germany, Russia, Turkey, Spain, and Latvia, has developed a multilingual software application that includes 6 storybooks for children at primary level in five different languages (English, German, Latin and Cyrillic Russian, Turkish and Spanish). The stories are read out aloud by native speakers, and pupils see images and text as well as a synchronous word highlighting function. Besides, the stories are complemented by tasks for reading comprehension, language awareness and cross-linguistic comparisons. Moreover, an Authoring Tool has been developed, allowing pupils to write their own stories and share them with children from all over the world within the Web Community (for further information see www.mu-vit.eu). Thus, pupils’ plurilingual and media competences will be promoted when working with the tool. […]