Turkish heritage speakers in Germany: vocabulary knowledge in German and Turkish

In the present chapter, first, the migration background of Turkish heritage speakers in Germany will be described. Secondly, the available literature on Turkish heritage speakers with a focus on vocabulary will be discussed. Finally, the results of a recent study on heritage speakers will be presented. The present study supports the findings of previous studies which aim to answer the question whether there is a vocabulary gap in bilinguals, such that bilinguals have smaller vocabularies than monolinguals. A deficit or gap is attested for bilinguals in a number of studies when they are compared with monolingual control groups (for a detailed overview see Thordardottir 2011). However, this gap seems to be an artefact of the methodology since bilinguals use their two languages in different domains (Grosjean 1982, 2001, 2015) and almost never develop a vocabulary in both of their languages that is comparable to monolinguals. We therefore need to include both languages in an investigation of a potential bilingual vocabulary gap. However, even when both languages are investigated, a deficit in vocabulary knowledge, especially productive vocabulary is attested in many studies (for a detailed discussion see Daller and Ongun, 2017). Because the literature presents somewhat inconclusive results, in this study, we wanted to test whether or not the productive vocabulary of a bilingual individual group also shows a gap when compared to monolingual controls. The present study is based on picture descriptions of 23 heritage speakers and two control groups for German (n=18) and Turkish (n=30). We take both languages into account to obtain a fine-grained picture of the bilingual proficiency of the heritage speakers in our sample. A vocabulary gap can be identified for Turkish but not for German. When the children’s total conceptual vocabulary (Pearson, Fernández and Oller, 1993) is considered, however, there is no vocabulary gap for this group of bilinguals

Evaluating compulsory minimum volume standards in Germany: how many hospitals were compliant in 2004?

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Minimum hospital procedure volumes are discussed as an instrument for quality assurance. In 2004 Germany introduced such annual minimum volumes nationwide on five surgical procedures: kidney, liver, stem cell transplantation, complex oesophageal, and pancreatic interventions. The present investigation is the first part of a study evaluating the effects of these minimum volumes on health care provision. Research questions address how many hospitals and cases were affected by minimum volume regulations in 2004, how affected hospitals were distributed according to minimum volumes, and how many hospitals within the 16 German states complied with the standards set for 2004.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The evaluation is based on the mandatory hospital quality reports for 2004. In the reports, all hospitals are statutorily obliged to state the number of procedures performed for each minimum volume. The data were analyzed descriptively.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In 2004, 485 out of 1710 German hospitals providing acute care and approximately 0.14% of all hospital cases were affected by minimum volume regulations. Liver, kidney, and stem cell transplantation affected from 23 to hospitals; complex oesophageal and pancreatic interventions affected from 297 to 455 hospitals. The inter-state comparison of the average hospital care area demonstrates large differences between city states and large area states and the eastern and western German states ranging from a minimum 51 km²up to a maximum 23.200 km², varying according to each procedure. A range of 9% – 16% of the transplantation hospitals did not comply with the standards affecting 1% – 2% of the patients whereas 29% and 18% of the hospitals treating complex oesophageal and pancreatic interventions failed the standards affecting 2% – 5% of the prevailing cases.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>In 2004, the newly introduced minimum volume regulations affected only up to a quarter of German acute care hospitals and few cases. However, excluding the hospitals not meeting the minimum volume standards from providing the respective procedures deserves considering two aspects: the hospital health care provision concepts by the German states as being responsible and from a patient perspective the geographically equal access to hospital care.</p