Sprachgebrauch in der mündlichen Unterrichtskommunikation. Eine korpusbasierte Wortschatzanalyse

Abstract Classroom discourse is the central form of conveying knowledge in schools. Currently, the view on language use in schools is strongly influenced by the concept of academic language. Since learners with different language exposure in German face different learning demands, it is necessary to describe the linguistic register that students newly entering this educational setting will encounter. Against this background, an exploratory study is presented which investigates the vocabulary used by teachers and students in whole group discussion based on the data sets available via the Research and Teaching Corpus of Spoken German (FOLK). For this purpose, an operationalization of vocabulary areas is proposed that distinguishes between basic vocabulary which is further differentiated into everyday words and polyvalent words, i. e. words that also occur in academic German, lexical units that go beyond basic vocabulary but are used across subjects, and (subject-)specific vocabulary. While students show an greater use of (subject-)specific (especially nominal) vocabulary units, teachers show an greater use of polyvalent units of the basic vocabulary. The results also suggest differences in terms of the subject matter. The findings provide a first quantitative insight into the lexical characteristics of knowledge-conveying and -representing language use in classroom discourse, thus allowing hypotheses to be drawn about associated linguistic demands and learning opportunities.