ÖDaF Annual Conference 2025: This is how multilingualism works!

At this year’s ÖDaF annual conference two speakers from Interface Wien showed possibilities for teaching oriented towards multilingualism.

From February 28th to March 1st, the Austrian Association for German as a Foreign Language/Second Language met - a meeting of scientists, teachers, students and many other interested parties with numerous lectures, workshops and discussion rounds. The theme of this year's conference was: Mit*Reden „Demokratie gemeinsam gestalten: Mehrsprachigkeit als Wegbereiter“("Shaping democracy together: Multilingualism as a pioneer"). The focus was on exchanging ideas about democratic teaching, the importance of multilingualism and the promotion of democratic principles in the various contexts of German as a foreign language, German as a second language and basic education.

Two colleagues from Interface Wien were represented this time as workshop speakers: Sibylle Pahola, together with Sabine Zopf from LEFÖ, designed a workshop on the topic “Praxisbeispiele für den Einbezug sprachlicher Vielfalt und die Arbeit mit literarischen Texten aus den Erstsprachen“ ("Practical examples for the inclusion of linguistic diversity and working with literary texts from the first languages"). Andrija Repec combines his DaZ lessons in the project StartWien College also with theatre projects with the young learners and led the exciting workshop “Theaterwerkstatt der Mehrsprachigkeit" ("Theatre workshop of multilingualism").

In their interactive workshops, the two DaZ trainers shared valuable insights into their work with multilingualism and used practical examples to show how linguistic diversity can enrich lessons.