Unterrichtspraxis-Teaching German最新文献

In recent years, the general conditions for teaching the German language in China have changed and the German language has experienced continuing growth in this context. Against this background, three new trends can be identified: namely integration, orientation towards general education, and digitalization. The reason for this is that the subject German as a Foreign Language with its dynamic development needs to be research-based, career-relevant, and relevant in the society and to individual growth. These demands have to be balanced with one another. Also, teaching the German language in China faces some challenges, such as raising the profile of German at universities, the continuity of learning German at primary/secondary schools and then later at universities, and the promotion of digital tools in teaching, learning, and research. Finally, regarding the teaching of the German language, it is expected that the cooperation between China, German-speaking countries and other countries where will be expanded and intensified.

In a recent study, English-speaking L2 learners of German who received explicit instruction made significantly greater improvements in pronunciation and vocabulary than learners who received implicit instruction. Against the backdrop of this work, the present study reports learner preferences and perceptions about implicit and explicit language instruction. Results highlight a general preference for explicit instruction among university students, with implicit instruction reported as a source of stress and learner anxiety. While implicit and explicit instruction both have a place in the L2 classroom, learners reported that explicit instruction helped circumvent crosslinguistic transfer and ease anxiety. Many learners reported the expectation of declarative knowledge as a function of higher education instruction, suggesting that the exclusive goal of communicative competence may be an insufficient target for university language students. This study highlights the importance of explicit instruction in the L2 classroom.

Writers and literature enjoy a prominent position in the culture and society of the German-speaking world. Today, German-speaking authors actively cultivate an online presence through publishers’ websites, personal webpages, blogs, and online forums. In this way, the Internet has transformed the literary reading experience of yore into a four-skill media extravaganza. This engenders unrivaled access to the aural, textual, and visual environment in which literary texts reside, a multisensory world in which our students thrive. This essay proposes that audio and video files can fill the gap between how students read and how literature typically has been taught. By analyzing recordings of authors reading their work, performing their work, and being interviewed about their work available in online databases, radio podcasts, and video segments, students learn to access literary texts aurally. This expanded context can revitalize literature for the contemporary language classroom. Following a theoretical introduction about reading in the Digital Age, we present strategies for implementation in sample lesson plans. Our approach exemplifies how combining authorial voices with texts elevates reading to a multimedia experience that increases both listening and reading comprehension.

This paper takes a closer look at diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) in the context of German Studies and the language classroom in the United States. The first part of the article examines the terminology, provides a general history of DEI/DEIA in higher education in the United States, and traces the development of DEI practices and language to include accessibility, belonging, and anti-racism. The second part of the article focuses on the scholarly collective Diversity, Decolonization, and the German Curriculum and its self-reflective and self-critical stance toward our field, solidarity efforts to create networks of tangible support and empowerment, and its foregrounding of activism. This leads to a discussion of the intersections between current political events and classroom practices. Finally, the last section details three DEIA practices in the classroom—positionality, social justice framework, and antiracism—as well as resources for their implementation. It also points to new promising developments, for example, new outcomes and assessments for the language and culture classroom and pedagogy of care.