My personal interest in this research

As some may know, I myself am a speaker of German as a second language. When I came to Austria, I was overwhelmed with the sheer amount of dialects spoken. If you are reading this, then you probably know exactly what I am about to tell you: There were no resources to actually help me in learning how to deal with the range of variation in Austria. So, I decided to take this problem on myself.

When I came to Austria, I actually did not like (well, that's an understatement: I hated) the range of dialects spoken. I couldn't understand them and I struggled to have even simple conversations or order something in a restaurant. By studying at the University of Salzburg, I made new friends, most of whom were dialect-speaking Austrians. They were very tolerant of my inability to understand their dialects and helped me in learning to understand and even speak them. But, not everyone has this luxury.

There were no resources for learning how to deal with dialects in the Austrian context. So, I decided to do it myself.

My interest in studying how speakers of German as a second language learn to deal with the mixture of standard German and dialects in commonplace situations stems from my own difficulties in achieving this. As already mentioned, there were no resources for me to use to even be able to study how to better understand or deal with dialects. This, however, is not necessarily due to lack of interest, but a lack of research on how second language learners in Austria actually go about dealing with the wide range of language varieties present in Austria. So, in order to even approach making valid pedagogical material for learning to handle the different language varieties, it is vital to understand the mechanisms at play in learners who acquire multiple varieties and sociolinguistically adequately employ them, thus allowing these learners to attain a more target-like language mastery.