"Mein Chef der Sprachlehrer" – Spracherwerb in der Berufsausbildung aus Sicht der Beteiligten

Biel/Bienne is a bilingual (French and German), or rather multilingual (due to immigration) city in the Canton of Berne, Switzerland. Furthermore, because of the use of Swiss German dialects and Swiss Standard German, a diglossic situation can also be observed. This article presents some first results of a current study focusing on how the, often monolingual, French-speaking apprentices deal with this polyglottal situation and aims at revealing apprentices’ language acquisition and the development of their competences during their apprenticeship. In Switzerland apprenticeships are carried out on behalf of a dual system. This means, that the apprentices usually spend one to two days at school doing vocational training and the rest of the week at their place of work. With the exception of language classes, schooling is usually solely carried out in French. However, the apprentices are exposed to multilingual and diglossic environments at their workplace. Consequently, the apprentices find themselves oscillating between monolingual and multilingual environments. The results presented here are based on the research gained during interviews with 20 apprentices and represent the apprentices’ personal accounts.