Spracherwerb in zweisprachiger Lernumgebung: die prosodische Wende

In agreement with the tendencies towards self-learning and learner-centred Language Teaching, the present article studies the Teaching of German as Second Language starting from the assumption that the language learner should be treated as bilingual speaker. Starting from his first encounter with the foreign language, every language learner can be studied according to bilingual methodological research criteria. The results of language competence tests carried out on Italian learners of German, show the central role of prosody, not only in communication, but also in language learning. A bilingual approach in the study of German as Second Language thus leads to the definition of a Language Teaching Model which gives more weight to spoken language, a real “prosodic revolution” in the field of Language Teaching at school and at university.