Language Learning

Most people learn one or more languages while in school. If language skills are acquired during childhood or adolescence, the decision is more likely determined by factors outside the learner's direct control. These factors may involve the school system's foreign-language offerings and parents' preferences. In contrast to early language acquisition, adult language learning is usually an individual's decision driven by different motives, which can be of a personal or an economic nature. The literature has thus far focused primarily on language proficiency and its determinants, and has largely abstained from a closer analysis of the process of adult-age language acquisition itself – not least because of a lack of data. Silke Übelmesser and her collaborators are seeking to close this gap. As part of a project funded by the German Science Foundation, they have "hand collected" a new panel dataset on adult-age German language learning, comprising more than 100 countries for a period of more than 50 years. The data will be used, first, to investigate the demand side of course participation and the circumstances under which migrants acquire language skills and, second, to examine the effects of language learning opportunities on migration, making use of exogenous changes in the supply of language courses. The results will help us understand the role of formal language courses in the language learning process of migrants, which is certainly a very timely topic in Germany.

Silke Übelmesser is Professor of Economics and Public Finance at the Friedrich-Schiller University of Jena and Research Professor at the Ifo Center for International Institutional Comparisons and Migration Research. She is a Fellow of the CESifo Research Network. Ms Übelmesser has published widely on education and migration policy but also has a strong interest in questions related to an ageing society. She has written a book on unfunded pension systems in the presence of ageing and migration published by North-Holland. She has also edited (together with Marcel Gérard) a book on the mobility of students and of the highly skilled, which appeared at MIT Press.

Silke Übelmesser obtained her Diplom as well as her doctorate and habilitation in Economics from the University of Munich. During her time in Munich, she was academic coordinator of the CES visitors' program and program director at CESifo GmbH. She was a visitor at the European University Institute in Florence and the Bocconi University in Milan.