Exercise 5
Rewrite the text to ensure complete anonymity and reflect on how this affects the message of the text.
Text Example:
The present study was conducted between January 2016 and January 2017 in a daycare center located in a district of Berlin where many people of non-German, especially Vietnamese, origin live. The daycare center, which we will refer to here as „Spatzennest,“ offers around 105 places, divided into five groups, and is one of the daycare centers supported by abw (a non-profit organization for work, education, and housing). It is specifically geared towards families born in Vietnam, as evidenced by the fact that it is the only daycare center nationwide to offer a bilingual German-Vietnamese care program. Its homepage is also designed bilingually, which greatly facilitates access for Vietnamese parents. In each group – at least ideally – a German-speaking and a Vietnamese-speaking educator work together in equal numbers, each interacting with the children in their native language, meaning they also speak Vietnamese with German-speaking children and vice versa.
During our first visit to Spatzennest, the director, Ms. M., who emphasized her origins from East Berlin, explained that this concept cannot always be consistently maintained, especially in situations where it is necessary for the addressed children to understand what is being said. Ms. M. also expressed a very critical attitude towards this educational concept in later conversations, which partly led to conflicts with the educators working there. For example, the two educators born in Vietnam, who work with the groups of five-year-olds, complained that the requirement to make important announcements in the respective mother tongue of the involved children does not truly promote bilingualism. The following situation illustrates this very clearly (…)
The present study was conducted between 2016 and 2017 in a daycare center located in a district of a large city where many people with a migration background live. The daycare center, which we will refer to here as „Spatzennest,“ offers around 105 places, divided into five groups. It is focused on families originating from a non-German country and offers a bilingual care program. Its homepage is also designed bilingually, which greatly facilitates access for migrant parents. In each group – at least ideally – a German-speaking educator and a native speaker of the other country’s language work together in equal parts, each interacting with the children in their mother tongue, meaning they also speak the other language with German-speaking children and vice versa.
During our first visit to Spatzennest, the director, Ms. M., explained to us that this concept cannot always be consistently maintained, especially in situations where it is necessary for the addressed children to understand what is being said. Ms. M. also expressed a very critical attitude towards this educational concept in later conversations, which partly led to conflicts with the educators working there. For example, two educators complained that the requirement to make important announcements in the respective mother tongue of the involved children does not truly promote bilingualism. The following situation illustrates this very clearly (…)
The degree of deciphering depends on the intent of the statement: If the goal is merely to emphasize the aspect that a multilingual childcare model in a German daycare center is met with criticism by the stakeholders for various reasons, then the version described above can be considered valid. However, if the explicit aim is to examine Vietnamese life in Berlin based on socialization structures and family constellations, omitting the specific information on this topic makes little sense. In this context, the reference to „East Berlin“ is particularly relevant.