The project reached its preliminary conclusion with an expert colloquium on June 19 and 20, 2023 at LMU Munich, the main applicant and coordinator of this research and development project. The 40 invited experts from various universities and educational institutions were presented with the motives, fundamentals, and goals of the project along with illustrative recordings from authentic research contexts. The diverse opportunities for application were open for discussion, resulting in an intensive exchange of views and ideas.

At the opening of the event the project leader, Professor Jörg Roche from the Institute for German as a Foreign Language at LMU Munich, thanked the Daimler and Benz Foundation on behalf of the entire research team for the longstanding, generous, and invariably understanding and constructive support that this socially relevant research project has received. The project partners were the Universities of Saarbrücken, Heidelberg, Basel, Mannheim as well as LMU Munich, Hochschule der Medien Stuttgart and the Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education, Frankfurt.

The symposium bore out once more the complex nature of research into the supposedly simple language of children. Children are extremely creative, constructive, and individual in their acquisition and use of linguistic resources – at least when they are provided with relevant and authentic stimuli. As the discussions showed, however, established processes for language level diagnosis are lacking. Moreover, the institutions lack the necessary resources, and often also sufficient professional competencies, to carry out appropriate diagnoses. These challenges are exacerbated by the fact that a language level diagnosis that meets with public acceptance must also offer concrete suggestions regarding subsequently necessary support for the children.

The project deals with this aspect in two ways: first, through planned “preventive” measures of general language education (early literacy) and second, through support offers characterized by a targeted design of the language offer. The same applies to a project funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture of Saarland for the scientific accompaniment of “Sprachkitas” (language-oriented daycare centers), in which the app is being used systematically as an instrument for the first time. The goal is to document progress in learning, to discuss findings with the consultants from the language daycare and at the centers themselves, and to derive funding priorities.

The participants in the colloquium demonstrated great support regarding the demand for more and, above all, better coordinated and consistent implementation of the diagnostic procedure developed by the Ladenburg Research Network on the part of the responsible educational institutions. This also includes combinations with other assessment procedures, e.g. in the area of speech therapy. At the same time, this demand highlights the requirement for extensive, comprehensive sensitization toward language acquisition and the need for offers for the basic and advanced training of educators and teachers, including low-threshold information measures for parents and the children’s environment.

In summary, the following requirements were defined: appropriate, readily available measurement methods and support materials; comprehensive measures for basic and advanced training and education; raising public awareness of the potential and the means of language education; and intensive information and education activities together with decision-makers at all levels of education and in professional organizations. The research consortium at LMU Munich is ready to persevere with its contribution through bilateral and multilateral research, making intensive use of the data pools provided by the Ladenburg Research Network with its outstanding opportunities for further data collection – also in interdisciplinary projects of research in education, speech therapy, and intercultural and motivational psychology.