Promoting the weak language of German-Spanish bilingual children living in Germany

This article describes some aspects of Spanish as the weak language of German-Spanish bilingual children growing up in Germany, which is officially a monolingual country. Weak domains are mainly found in the phonetics, but can also be found in the lexicon and in the morphosyntax. The article also describes teaching materials that have been created to promote those weak areas that are vulnerable to the influence of the strong language of the bilingual child. The materials were tried out during nine weeks with children that attended the Spanish complementary school. The analyses show that the percentages of target-like production of children that participated in the trial increased, whereas the percentages of target-like production of the control group, which attended the school without using the materials, decreased.