ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Portuguese and Vietnamese, two languages rarely taught in a school context in Germany, but which, due to their linguistic nature, have a certain advancement in the teaching of dialectal varieties. The central question will be what can be transferred from the approaches in learning and teaching these languages to the foreign languages studied at German schools. The question of choosing a variety is apparent in Portuguese with the fundamental choice between European and Brazilian standard. Vietnamese and its dichotomy of Northern and Southern dialect is a second example where addressing varieties seems to be established. Based on an approach of Comparative Language Didactics, the idea is to transfer strategies identified in the learning material of the languages Portuguese and Vietnamese to the school languages English, French (to a lesser extent), and Spanish. Some modern textbooks of those two languages implement ways to raise the awareness of linguistic variation, to expand continuously the knowledge of varieties, and to train communicative skills, especially listening comprehension. Taking into account the specifics of classroom language learning, the transferability of several strategies identified in the materials – i.e., variety switch and continuous development of variety competence – is critically discussed.
