THE ESSENCE OF THE HUMANITIES One of the key components determining the entire field of the humanities consists of teaching critical thinking expressed orally and in writing. [...]whatever literary works or languages we work with, ultimately the purpose proves to be to lay the foundation for cultural competence, linguistic skills, research abilities, and writing skills for a constantly changing world. The exchange via online writing thus proved to be a highly innovative method of studying, demanding a high level of concentration and involvement from the professor and the students. Since we emphasize in the humanities in general and in German studies in particular writing skills, this method was successful. Teaching a literature course in German at an upper level via such a chat room proved to be challenging at first, but then it was highly productive because of the intensive writing activities by students and the instructor. Top Hat is also highly useful for taking attendance (once, twice, or three times per class), for quizzes, and for multiple-choice exams. Since questions can be posted so easily online-also during class meetings-students can also be encouraged to get involved in the teaching process themselves by formulating discussion questions for the entire class.
{"title":"Productivity and creativity triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and new technologies","authors":"Albrecht Classen","doi":"10.1111/tger.12223","DOIUrl":"10.1111/tger.12223","url":null,"abstract":"THE ESSENCE OF THE HUMANITIES One of the key components determining the entire field of the humanities consists of teaching critical thinking expressed orally and in writing. [...]whatever literary works or languages we work with, ultimately the purpose proves to be to lay the foundation for cultural competence, linguistic skills, research abilities, and writing skills for a constantly changing world. The exchange via online writing thus proved to be a highly innovative method of studying, demanding a high level of concentration and involvement from the professor and the students. Since we emphasize in the humanities in general and in German studies in particular writing skills, this method was successful. Teaching a literature course in German at an upper level via such a chat room proved to be challenging at first, but then it was highly productive because of the intensive writing activities by students and the instructor. Top Hat is also highly useful for taking attendance (once, twice, or three times per class), for quizzes, and for multiple-choice exams. Since questions can be posted so easily online-also during class meetings-students can also be encouraged to get involved in the teaching process themselves by formulating discussion questions for the entire class.","PeriodicalId":43693,"journal":{"name":"Unterrichtspraxis-Teaching German","volume":"56 1","pages":"41-44"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48303919","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Since Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German is the society journal of the American Association of Teachers of German (AATG), these discussion topics arose and will arise from important discourses in the Association. Disruptions pose a challenge for teachers of German at all levels of education, personally and professionally. [...]the set of 21 short articles in this issue is intended to help us as a community to give meaning to current challenges and to share what we have learned. Martina Caspari ("Ganz entspannt im Hier und Jetzt: Fostering Social Presence in Communicative Language Instruction") went back to the natural approach and total physical response, which were popular in the 1980s. Heidi Denzel and Nicolay Ostrau write in "Responding to the Mental Health Crisis among our Language-Learning Community" that it is possible, and necessary, to develop an approach that integrates wellness and universal design.
由于Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching germany是美国德语教师协会(AATG)的社会期刊，这些讨论话题已经出现并将出现在协会的重要话语中。这种混乱对各级教育的德语教师，无论是个人还是专业，都构成了挑战。[…本期的21篇短文旨在帮助我们作为一个社区来理解当前的挑战，并分享我们所学到的东西。Martina Caspari(“Ganz entspannt im Hier und jett:在交际语言教学中培养社会存在”)回到了20世纪80年代流行的自然方法和完全身体反应。Heidi Denzel和Nicolay Ostrau在《应对语言学习群体中的心理健康危机》中写道，开发一种将健康与通用设计相结合的方法是可能的，也是必要的。
{"title":"(Re‐)Discoveries in a Time of Disruption","authors":"Karin Baumgartner, M. Schulze","doi":"10.1111/tger.1111","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/tger.1111","url":null,"abstract":"Since Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German is the society journal of the American Association of Teachers of German (AATG), these discussion topics arose and will arise from important discourses in the Association. Disruptions pose a challenge for teachers of German at all levels of education, personally and professionally. [...]the set of 21 short articles in this issue is intended to help us as a community to give meaning to current challenges and to share what we have learned. Martina Caspari (\"Ganz entspannt im Hier und Jetzt: Fostering Social Presence in Communicative Language Instruction\") went back to the natural approach and total physical response, which were popular in the 1980s. Heidi Denzel and Nicolay Ostrau write in \"Responding to the Mental Health Crisis among our Language-Learning Community\" that it is possible, and necessary, to develop an approach that integrates wellness and universal design.","PeriodicalId":43693,"journal":{"name":"Unterrichtspraxis-Teaching German","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44454687","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p>This Forum contribution reflects on the new experience of the lack of human contact and interaction in a common space of physical closeness, and how this has affected language learning-and-teaching. Language instruction as a social event (Fahim & Haghani, <span>2012</span>, p. 693) and as a humanistic endeavor in the here and now, which requires students to be present and interactive in the classroom, has been my teaching philosophy, which I followed ever since I was trained in applying the Natural Approach (Krashen & Terrell, <span>1988</span>) in the early 1990s at UCLA. It is a method of language learning which aims at a classroom fostering language acquisition through meaningful input, and, consequently, output. To achieve this aim, social presence is a must as a low affective filter supports language acquisition, enabling a fear-free environment in which social exchange is key. The classroom time is mainly dedicated to input activities (listening, including being read to) and interaction (speaking), whereas the time outside of the classroom is dedicated to reading and writing. Classroom activities are affective-humanistic activities (such as dialogs, interviews, preference ranking, personal charts and tables, and revealing information about yourself) and activities using the imagination and the body, including total physical response (TPR) (Krashen & Terrell, <span>1988</span>, p. 109), which is a method developed by Asher (<span>1969</span>). In the TPR classroom, the students are asked to move in the space according to the instructions of the teacher. They can act out movements, mental or emotional states, and everyday activities or become pantomimes acting out entire stories with their bodies. Of course, this might be more difficult in online instruction, but the student does not always have to be in front of the computer. They can just use the space of their room and follow the instructions of the teacher.</p><p>I think of my classroom as a blended-learning space making use of readily available “roughly tuned input” (Krashen & Terrell, <span>1988</span>, p. 33) of the second language (L2) from many online resources. However, “finely tuned input” (p. 33) still needs to be generated by the instructor in face-to-face instruction as well as in online teaching according to the needs of the group most of the time. That is why all activities presented here are centered around finely tuned input and help language acquisition through repetition (high-frequency input), recycling of words, and range (a great variety of input in different contexts), to name just some input techniques (Caspari, <span>2019</span>). The concept of social presence “the degree to which a person is perceived as ‘real’ in mediated communication” is an essential indicator of success in online teaching (Cobb, <span>2009</span>, p. 241). The activities suggested here target relationship, community building, and awareness of and contact with one's own (physi
本次论坛的贡献反映了在一个共同的身体亲密空间中缺乏人类接触和互动的新体验，以及这对语言学习和教学的影响。作为社会事件的语言教学(法希姆&;Haghani, 2012, p. 693)，并且作为此时此地的人文主义努力，这要求学生在课堂上在场和互动，这一直是我的教学理念，自从我接受了应用自然方法的培训以来，我一直遵循这一理念(Krashen &Terrell, 1988)在1990年代早期在加州大学洛杉矶分校。它是一种语言学习方法，旨在通过有意义的输入和输出来促进课堂语言习得。为了实现这一目标，社会存在是必须的，因为低情感过滤器支持语言习得，创造一个无恐惧的环境，其中社会交换是关键。课堂时间主要用于输入活动(听，包括被读给别人听)和互动(说)，而课堂外的时间则用于阅读和写作。课堂活动是情感人文活动(如对话、访谈、偏好排序、个人图表和表格、揭示自己的信息)和使用想象力和身体的活动，包括总身体反应(TPR) (Krashen &Terrell, 1988, p. 109)，这是Asher(1969)发展的一种方法。在TPR教室里，学生被要求根据老师的指示在空间里移动。他们可以表演动作，精神或情绪状态，以及日常活动，或者用他们的身体表演整个故事。当然，这在在线教学中可能会更困难，但学生不必总是坐在电脑前。他们可以只使用他们的房间的空间，并按照老师的指示。我认为我的教室是一个混合学习空间，利用现成的“粗略调整输入”(Krashen &Terrell, 1988, p. 33)的第二语言(L2)从许多在线资源。然而，在面对面教学和在线教学中，大多数时候仍然需要教师根据群体的需要产生“微调输入”(第33页)。这就是为什么这里介绍的所有活动都以微调输入为中心，并通过重复(高频输入)、单词循环和范围(不同上下文中的各种输入)来帮助语言习得，仅举一些输入技术(Caspari, 2019)。社会存在的概念“一个人在中介沟通中被视为‘真实’的程度”是在线教学成功的一个重要指标(Cobb, 2009, p. 241)。这里建议的活动目标是关系，社区建设，以及与自己(身体)自我的认识和接触。在疫情开始时，我们被告知，德国所有高等教育机构(就像所有学校一样)都将关闭，教师们将几乎立即开始在线授课。这对我来说是一段压力很大的时期，特别是因为我很长一段时间都不知道该使用什么平台，它能做什么，以及如何培养社交存在感。我开始思考身体的哪些方面可以转移到在线教学中。即使是“危机引发的”(Gacs等人，2020年，第380页)，这些想法本身也会成为在线语言教学方法。我开始重新评估哪些活动对我的学生最有益、最令人兴奋。虽然大多数活动似乎依赖于实际存在，但我意识到它们与传统课堂一样适合在线教学，这也是Yamada(2009)和Cobb(2009)的观察结果。我选择的活动不依赖于特定的语言或水平，不依赖于学习者的特定年龄，也不依赖于特定的教学工具。它们的共同之处在于它们是在同步设置中完成的。Gacs等人(2020，第386页)指出，“在线语言学习的关键是确保保持个人体验的相关性和交流性”，这是本文建议的所有活动的目标。它们分为两类:情感人文活动(自我意识和与他人互动)和涉及实际身体的活动，从而产生(身体)自我意识。然后，个人经验可以用于整个小组的后续练习，也可以用于结对或小组工作。许多输入活动一次针对所有学生，不需要分组讨论。同时，学生需要做出反应，给出一个信号，例如，通过鼓掌表示是或否。 在任何课堂上，使用任何会议工具，都有可能让几个学生完成一个特定的任务;所有其他学生都是安静的观察者或听众，可以分配不同的任务，比如记笔记，研究积极参与者的行为，反思他们的互动和使用的语言的充分性，评论所提出的想法的实用性，等等。每个人都参与其中，后续任务可以基于这些活动创建。学生的个人空间可以成为社交活动的一部分，他们各自的房间在家里有一个虚拟的背景来保护他们的隐私。应该鼓励学生开着相机，以便更好地互动(Castelli &萨瓦里,2021;petcham<s:1>等人，2022)。梦幻之旅(克拉申&;Terrell, 1988, p. 107-108)也允许丰富的可理解输入，并且对大群体很有用。他们是真实的和个人相关的，可以适应许多教学需要。这些旅行是一种内部的TPR，具有高度的焦点和内在的注意力，能够“打得很深”(Stevick, 1973)。森林之旅可以作为一个例子:森林被详细描述。观众被要求在他们的想象中做出决定，比如森林应该是什么样子(叙述者给出的想法)，如何克服地面上的障碍(同样，叙述者给出的想法)，遇到其他徒步旅行者时该怎么做，到达池塘时该怎么做，到达小屋，等等。幻想之旅允许高频输入、范围(不同语境下的多种输入)和频繁的词汇循环(Caspari, 2019)。讲故事的方法允许教师在听故事阶段输入丰富的内容(Caspari, 2020)。讲故事，取决于所讲的故事和所选择的体裁，可以在各个层次的语言教学中进行。Mason(2013)为不同语言和水平的学生提供了大量的讲故事和听力材料。故事可以成为强调生产和输出(说和写)的其他活动的起点。提高认识活动也可以作为一种有效的输入工具。它们类似于幻想之旅。然而，幻想之旅指的是学生接触并对其做出反应的外部世界。意识活动以身体或自我为中心。史蒂文斯(1971)提供了一系列仍然非常受欢迎的活动。这些活动增加了对身体的意识，加深了对外部世界的意识，例如，听声音，闻气味，感觉身体部位，心脏，感受内心的紧张，痛苦，接触自然和雨，风，热或冷等元素。理想情况下，专注于意识的学生在接受丰富输入的同时，没有意识到语言习得的过程。在我的课堂上使用的意识活动是Krashen和Terrell (1988, p. 107)介绍的活动的延伸。这些活动的重要性在于学生在后续活动中对彼此的经历感兴趣(第108页)。面对面教学的某些活动可以很容易地转移到在线教学中，在学生中创造出强烈的社会存在感和自我意识，成为同步社会事件的一部分。可理解的微调输入可以直接给出和处理。尽管我知道有许多有效的方法可以使用在线功能和程序来创建社交存在(Hampel &Stickler, 2015)，课堂上的一些活动可以将精细调整的输入直接转移到仅在线格式。最后，封锁结束了，我又开始在教室里教书，现在叫Präsenzunterricht(面对面教学)。在经历了完全孤立的经历后，人们似乎非常感激再次出现在一起。所有学科的德国大学生——大多不满意独家在线教学——都错过了反馈、日常结构和与同学的交流(见科尔尼，2022)。我在Präsenzunterricht第一天的观察让我震惊。那些以前从未见过我或其他学生的学生们走了进来，尽可能靠近黑板坐了下来。在30分钟的教学后，他们问是否可以创建一个WhatsApp群，以便在课外保持联系。每天下课后，他们都一起吃午饭。在30多年的教学生涯中，我第一次在整个强化课程中获得了全组的完美出勤率。他们主动地在课外合作，主动地向同学而不是老师求助来解决问题。最后，他们一起准备考试，不需要我的鼓励。 在封锁之前，我们几乎不知道(几乎)完全隔离是什么，也不知道它会对我们
{"title":"Ganz entspannt im hier und jetzt: Fostering social presence in communicative language instruction—Before, during, and after the pandemic","authors":"Martina Caspari","doi":"10.1111/tger.12245","DOIUrl":"10.1111/tger.12245","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This Forum contribution reflects on the new experience of the lack of human contact and interaction in a common space of physical closeness, and how this has affected language learning-and-teaching. Language instruction as a social event (Fahim & Haghani, <span>2012</span>, p. 693) and as a humanistic endeavor in the here and now, which requires students to be present and interactive in the classroom, has been my teaching philosophy, which I followed ever since I was trained in applying the Natural Approach (Krashen & Terrell, <span>1988</span>) in the early 1990s at UCLA. It is a method of language learning which aims at a classroom fostering language acquisition through meaningful input, and, consequently, output. To achieve this aim, social presence is a must as a low affective filter supports language acquisition, enabling a fear-free environment in which social exchange is key. The classroom time is mainly dedicated to input activities (listening, including being read to) and interaction (speaking), whereas the time outside of the classroom is dedicated to reading and writing. Classroom activities are affective-humanistic activities (such as dialogs, interviews, preference ranking, personal charts and tables, and revealing information about yourself) and activities using the imagination and the body, including total physical response (TPR) (Krashen & Terrell, <span>1988</span>, p. 109), which is a method developed by Asher (<span>1969</span>). In the TPR classroom, the students are asked to move in the space according to the instructions of the teacher. They can act out movements, mental or emotional states, and everyday activities or become pantomimes acting out entire stories with their bodies. Of course, this might be more difficult in online instruction, but the student does not always have to be in front of the computer. They can just use the space of their room and follow the instructions of the teacher.</p><p>I think of my classroom as a blended-learning space making use of readily available “roughly tuned input” (Krashen & Terrell, <span>1988</span>, p. 33) of the second language (L2) from many online resources. However, “finely tuned input” (p. 33) still needs to be generated by the instructor in face-to-face instruction as well as in online teaching according to the needs of the group most of the time. That is why all activities presented here are centered around finely tuned input and help language acquisition through repetition (high-frequency input), recycling of words, and range (a great variety of input in different contexts), to name just some input techniques (Caspari, <span>2019</span>). The concept of social presence “the degree to which a person is perceived as ‘real’ in mediated communication” is an essential indicator of success in online teaching (Cobb, <span>2009</span>, p. 241). The activities suggested here target relationship, community building, and awareness of and contact with one's own (physi","PeriodicalId":43693,"journal":{"name":"Unterrichtspraxis-Teaching German","volume":"56 1","pages":"17-20"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/tger.12245","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46941506","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Research has shown that world language learners’ listening comprehension skills develop at a slower pace than reading or speaking skills, possibly because a systematic approach to developing listening skills is often neglected in classroom contexts. To address this issue, the present study investigated whether listening skills can be improved through targeted practice. Thirty-three learners of a third-semester German course were assigned to either an experimental group (n = 22) or a control group (n = 11). Over the course of one semester, the experimental group watched short episodes of a German web-based telenovela designed for language learners and completed vocabulary exercises and comprehension questions. Listening skills were assessed through the DIALANG test and a self-assessment at the beginning and at the end of the semester. Results showed that only learners in the experimental group made significant gains in listening proficiency. Both groups increased their self-rated listening proficiency. Overall, the results suggest that using a telenovela for targeted listening practice is a useful way to help learners develop their listening skills.
{"title":"Effects of extended exposure to video in the language classroom on listening proficiency","authors":"Theresa Schenker, Lieselotte Sippel","doi":"10.1111/tger.12220","DOIUrl":"10.1111/tger.12220","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Research has shown that world language learners’ listening comprehension skills develop at a slower pace than reading or speaking skills, possibly because a systematic approach to developing listening skills is often neglected in classroom contexts. To address this issue, the present study investigated whether listening skills can be improved through targeted practice. Thirty-three learners of a third-semester German course were assigned to either an experimental group (<i>n</i> = 22) or a control group (<i>n</i> = 11). Over the course of one semester, the experimental group watched short episodes of a German web-based telenovela designed for language learners and completed vocabulary exercises and comprehension questions. Listening skills were assessed through the DIALANG test and a self-assessment at the beginning and at the end of the semester. Results showed that only learners in the experimental group made significant gains in listening proficiency. Both groups increased their self-rated listening proficiency. Overall, the results suggest that using a telenovela for targeted listening practice is a useful way to help learners develop their listening skills.</p>","PeriodicalId":43693,"journal":{"name":"Unterrichtspraxis-Teaching German","volume":"56 2","pages":"118-130"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44903974","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p>The outbreak of the pandemic, followed by harsh lockdowns, found me at a new work position as the coordinator of the Latin courses as part of the General Education at the University of Bonn. Without any specific template handy, all courses had to be reorganized to go online, depending merely on the experience and disposal of each lecturer. Afterward, I had plenty of time to observe the effects of mainly asynchronous teaching on both an immense number of students and their teachers. In a survey I ran for personal research purposes at the end of that first COVID-19 semester, the following points became clear: Students expect individual feedback, constructive interaction, and engaging content. The students’ responses were in many cases a direct plea for communication and socialization with their peers and teachers. At that point, I recalled Michel Serres’ <i>Thumbelina</i>, wittily translated into German as a “love confession to the networked generation.” In his work, the French philosopher discusses the necessity of considering the fact that transition to e-learning is also a matter of education policy rather than a matter of technological advance, because we need to educate our students to act in a new space of open, inventive thought, to match not only the transformation of technologies but rather the forms of knowledge and social organization they need to manage (Serres, <span>2012, 2014</span>).</p><p>A few months later and parallel to my coordination tasks at the University of Bonn, I started in a new role as a lecturer in German of intensive language courses for international students at the University of Bielefeld. Of course, our students were residing in their home-countries (e.g., Mexico, Brazil, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Australia, Greece, and France) at that time. So, one of our main concerns was to bring as much authentic input (e.g., original texts, videos recorded in our university building and on campus) as possible into the course. In the case of our German courses, interaction was in balance with asynchronous learning activities, following a flipped-classroom model which proved to be effective and fun for both students and lecturers, based on their feedback on instructional sequences and their exam results. However, although my students looked satisfied in class in September 2020, I observed how this started to gradually change in the subsequent courses. A reasonable explanation maybe the fact that virtual interaction was no longer the exception but rather had become the norm. Thus, the initial fun started to abate.</p><p>After the first lockdown, evaluations run at the University College of Teacher Education Lower Austria (PH Niederösterreich) regarding distance learning from the point of view both of teachers and students showed comparable evidence: On one hand, the workload of the courses was rated as appropriate and the frequency of the occasions for self-reflection as quite fair. On the other hand, although the statements on co
{"title":"Teaching resilience in fragile times","authors":"Penelope Kolovou","doi":"10.1111/tger.12247","DOIUrl":"10.1111/tger.12247","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The outbreak of the pandemic, followed by harsh lockdowns, found me at a new work position as the coordinator of the Latin courses as part of the General Education at the University of Bonn. Without any specific template handy, all courses had to be reorganized to go online, depending merely on the experience and disposal of each lecturer. Afterward, I had plenty of time to observe the effects of mainly asynchronous teaching on both an immense number of students and their teachers. In a survey I ran for personal research purposes at the end of that first COVID-19 semester, the following points became clear: Students expect individual feedback, constructive interaction, and engaging content. The students’ responses were in many cases a direct plea for communication and socialization with their peers and teachers. At that point, I recalled Michel Serres’ <i>Thumbelina</i>, wittily translated into German as a “love confession to the networked generation.” In his work, the French philosopher discusses the necessity of considering the fact that transition to e-learning is also a matter of education policy rather than a matter of technological advance, because we need to educate our students to act in a new space of open, inventive thought, to match not only the transformation of technologies but rather the forms of knowledge and social organization they need to manage (Serres, <span>2012, 2014</span>).</p><p>A few months later and parallel to my coordination tasks at the University of Bonn, I started in a new role as a lecturer in German of intensive language courses for international students at the University of Bielefeld. Of course, our students were residing in their home-countries (e.g., Mexico, Brazil, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Australia, Greece, and France) at that time. So, one of our main concerns was to bring as much authentic input (e.g., original texts, videos recorded in our university building and on campus) as possible into the course. In the case of our German courses, interaction was in balance with asynchronous learning activities, following a flipped-classroom model which proved to be effective and fun for both students and lecturers, based on their feedback on instructional sequences and their exam results. However, although my students looked satisfied in class in September 2020, I observed how this started to gradually change in the subsequent courses. A reasonable explanation maybe the fact that virtual interaction was no longer the exception but rather had become the norm. Thus, the initial fun started to abate.</p><p>After the first lockdown, evaluations run at the University College of Teacher Education Lower Austria (PH Niederösterreich) regarding distance learning from the point of view both of teachers and students showed comparable evidence: On one hand, the workload of the courses was rated as appropriate and the frequency of the occasions for self-reflection as quite fair. On the other hand, although the statements on co","PeriodicalId":43693,"journal":{"name":"Unterrichtspraxis-Teaching German","volume":"56 1","pages":"25-29"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/tger.12247","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46399008","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The U.S. Department of State recognizes that students "act as citizen ambassadors by building relationships within their host communities, demonstrating American values, and debunking stereotypes" (U.S. Department of State, 2023). According to the GAPP website, over 750 high schools in the United States have a GAPP program and more than 9000 students participate in GAPP each year. Afterwards, the students filled out an evaluation of GAVE, provided on the GAVE website. Ludwig confirms that "online classes cannot replace the classical purpose of a stay abroad, namely: to be in a different place, in a different environment, to gain hands-on experience and, last but not least, to become more independent" (Ludwig, 2022).
{"title":"Pivoting to a virtual high school exchange: The GAVE program","authors":"Alysha Holmquist","doi":"10.1111/tger.12242","DOIUrl":"10.1111/tger.12242","url":null,"abstract":"The U.S. Department of State recognizes that students \"act as citizen ambassadors by building relationships within their host communities, demonstrating American values, and debunking stereotypes\" (U.S. Department of State, 2023). According to the GAPP website, over 750 high schools in the United States have a GAPP program and more than 9000 students participate in GAPP each year. Afterwards, the students filled out an evaluation of GAVE, provided on the GAVE website. Ludwig confirms that \"online classes cannot replace the classical purpose of a stay abroad, namely: to be in a different place, in a different environment, to gain hands-on experience and, last but not least, to become more independent\" (Ludwig, 2022).","PeriodicalId":43693,"journal":{"name":"Unterrichtspraxis-Teaching German","volume":"56 1","pages":"49-52"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42561420","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Growth despite (major) disruption: Curricular innovations in a small German program","authors":"Melissa Elliot","doi":"10.1111/tger.12234","DOIUrl":"10.1111/tger.12234","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43693,"journal":{"name":"Unterrichtspraxis-Teaching German","volume":"56 1","pages":"73-75"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47229586","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p>As the last question to the final exam for my German literature in translation course about a decade ago, I threw my students a softball: “Which book was your favorite, and why?” The answers, as I expected, varied. What I did not expect was that out of nearly 20 students in this General humanities course, not one listed Marlen Haushofer's Austrian novel <i>Die Wand</i> (<i>The Wall</i>, 1963, subsequently referred to in English because class taught in translation). This silent censure was surprising. I had in part assigned the bestseller because I was confident that students would be gripped by its shocking turn of events: the dystopian pseudo-memoir chronicles the daily routines of a woman who, during a weekend vacation in the foothills of the Alps, suddenly finds herself alone and isolated from the rest of the world by a massive, invisible, and insurmountable wall. The author never reveals the specific cataclysmic event that precipitated the wall but given the tense geopolitical climate in which it was written, most readers have assumed some kind of nuclear disaster from which the narrator has been spared (but who built it? and when?). What follows is a Robinson Crusoe-esque chronicle describing how the protagonist fills her days, days of inescapable social distancing that seem to blend together into cycles of food gathering and speculation about an uncertain future.</p><p>After <i>The Wall</i> failed that final exam, I felt compelled to remove it from my reading list: students simply could not relate to the novel's odd mixture of personal and social trauma along with the quotidian tasks of harvesting, cooking, and other domestic chores. The book, they collectively lamented, was about housekeeping. Blissfully unaware of how mundane daily routines can help us maintain the illusion of order and control in the midst of catastrophe, most of my students, who tend to come from comfortable backgrounds, could not imagine themselves into anything resembling the narrator's circumstance.</p><p>COVID-19 has given the novel renewed relevance. Not only do the early pandemic fads of sourdough baking and mushroom foraging make the narrator's frontier-style life now seem less removed from reality, the loneliness, uncertainty, and subdued terror that form the backdrop of her daily routine perhaps for the first time will be relatable to students. Certainly, the fears of the nuclear age—and indeed of any geopolitical or viral cataclysm—pose the same threats to our most basic livelihood, peeling away as unessential our layers of humanity and at worst, leaving us mere organisms seeking our next meal. The novel's fixation on mundane household tasks, steeped in unease, alienation, and accompanied by hints that the entire cataclysm likely was caused by human hands, create an unsettling combination of banality and terror—a word pair that also describes life under a pandemic lockdown.</p><p>At first glance, the novel reads like a survival handbook, emotionally austere
{"title":"A cold war text for the COVID generation","authors":"Alyssa Howards","doi":"10.1111/tger.12236","DOIUrl":"10.1111/tger.12236","url":null,"abstract":"<p>As the last question to the final exam for my German literature in translation course about a decade ago, I threw my students a softball: “Which book was your favorite, and why?” The answers, as I expected, varied. What I did not expect was that out of nearly 20 students in this General humanities course, not one listed Marlen Haushofer's Austrian novel <i>Die Wand</i> (<i>The Wall</i>, 1963, subsequently referred to in English because class taught in translation). This silent censure was surprising. I had in part assigned the bestseller because I was confident that students would be gripped by its shocking turn of events: the dystopian pseudo-memoir chronicles the daily routines of a woman who, during a weekend vacation in the foothills of the Alps, suddenly finds herself alone and isolated from the rest of the world by a massive, invisible, and insurmountable wall. The author never reveals the specific cataclysmic event that precipitated the wall but given the tense geopolitical climate in which it was written, most readers have assumed some kind of nuclear disaster from which the narrator has been spared (but who built it? and when?). What follows is a Robinson Crusoe-esque chronicle describing how the protagonist fills her days, days of inescapable social distancing that seem to blend together into cycles of food gathering and speculation about an uncertain future.</p><p>After <i>The Wall</i> failed that final exam, I felt compelled to remove it from my reading list: students simply could not relate to the novel's odd mixture of personal and social trauma along with the quotidian tasks of harvesting, cooking, and other domestic chores. The book, they collectively lamented, was about housekeeping. Blissfully unaware of how mundane daily routines can help us maintain the illusion of order and control in the midst of catastrophe, most of my students, who tend to come from comfortable backgrounds, could not imagine themselves into anything resembling the narrator's circumstance.</p><p>COVID-19 has given the novel renewed relevance. Not only do the early pandemic fads of sourdough baking and mushroom foraging make the narrator's frontier-style life now seem less removed from reality, the loneliness, uncertainty, and subdued terror that form the backdrop of her daily routine perhaps for the first time will be relatable to students. Certainly, the fears of the nuclear age—and indeed of any geopolitical or viral cataclysm—pose the same threats to our most basic livelihood, peeling away as unessential our layers of humanity and at worst, leaving us mere organisms seeking our next meal. The novel's fixation on mundane household tasks, steeped in unease, alienation, and accompanied by hints that the entire cataclysm likely was caused by human hands, create an unsettling combination of banality and terror—a word pair that also describes life under a pandemic lockdown.</p><p>At first glance, the novel reads like a survival handbook, emotionally austere","PeriodicalId":43693,"journal":{"name":"Unterrichtspraxis-Teaching German","volume":"56 1","pages":"14-16"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/tger.12236","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43033926","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p>Around late 2019 to early 2020, the world was first hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. The imposed lockdowns created newer challenges for the education sector, as they led to a temporary suspension of physical classes and forced both teachers and students to switch, at short notice, to online teaching. In this paper, I discuss the impact of the pandemic on foreign language learning (FLL) in India and examine the strategies employed by teachers to address the challenges posed by the lack of physical classes.</p><p>FLL is a specialized form of learning because of its reliance on learner participation. Certain FLL methods such as “embodied learning” consider the impact of bodily movements in the learning process (Kosmas, <span>2021</span>). In their research on FLL for preschool children, Toumpaniari et al. (<span>2015</span>) noted that physical activity involving gross motor activities can lead to better cognitive functioning and higher academic achievement scores. They also observe that research within the theoretical framework of embodied cognition has shown that embodying knowledge using more subtle motor activities, such as task-relevant gestures, has a positive effect on learning (Toumpaniari et al., <span>2015</span>). Research on FLL for adult learners shows that they pay more attention to the teacher's verbal explanation when embodied actions are used (Matsumoto, <span>2019</span>).</p><p>The pandemic created a situation in which learning with embodied action was not possible. Klimova (<span>2021</span>: 1793) notes that online teaching fails to offer a “strong teaching presence, which is a catalyst for the development of social and cognitive presence and a key component of traditional professional training.” She notes further that whilst students find online language classes effective, “face-to-face classes cannot be replaced” (Klimova, <span>2021</span>: 1793). In this paper, I outline the methods I employed to compensate for the multisensory approach of embodied learning and examine to what extent online teaching can serve as an alternative to physical classes with respect to FLL.</p><p>The data presented here is based on my DaF (Deutsch als Fremdsprache—German as a foreign language) teaching during the first lockdown period in India (March–May 2020). The data was collected at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (henceforth JNU), a premier state university based in New Delhi. In April 2020, JNU opted for online classes and extended the semester by 1 month to compensate for the time lost, so the data collected for this paper is from the period April to June 2020. The students I taught were intermediate learners of German: At the time of collection of data, they were in the second year of their BA program in German Studies and had done 1 year of German starting from ab-initio level in their first year. It is expected that the language proficiency of BA-2 students is at the B1 level. However, this was not entirely the case: out of the 32 student
{"title":"DaF, COVID-19, and newer technologies: Experiences from an Indian University","authors":"Abhimanyu Sharma","doi":"10.1111/tger.12241","DOIUrl":"10.1111/tger.12241","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Around late 2019 to early 2020, the world was first hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. The imposed lockdowns created newer challenges for the education sector, as they led to a temporary suspension of physical classes and forced both teachers and students to switch, at short notice, to online teaching. In this paper, I discuss the impact of the pandemic on foreign language learning (FLL) in India and examine the strategies employed by teachers to address the challenges posed by the lack of physical classes.</p><p>FLL is a specialized form of learning because of its reliance on learner participation. Certain FLL methods such as “embodied learning” consider the impact of bodily movements in the learning process (Kosmas, <span>2021</span>). In their research on FLL for preschool children, Toumpaniari et al. (<span>2015</span>) noted that physical activity involving gross motor activities can lead to better cognitive functioning and higher academic achievement scores. They also observe that research within the theoretical framework of embodied cognition has shown that embodying knowledge using more subtle motor activities, such as task-relevant gestures, has a positive effect on learning (Toumpaniari et al., <span>2015</span>). Research on FLL for adult learners shows that they pay more attention to the teacher's verbal explanation when embodied actions are used (Matsumoto, <span>2019</span>).</p><p>The pandemic created a situation in which learning with embodied action was not possible. Klimova (<span>2021</span>: 1793) notes that online teaching fails to offer a “strong teaching presence, which is a catalyst for the development of social and cognitive presence and a key component of traditional professional training.” She notes further that whilst students find online language classes effective, “face-to-face classes cannot be replaced” (Klimova, <span>2021</span>: 1793). In this paper, I outline the methods I employed to compensate for the multisensory approach of embodied learning and examine to what extent online teaching can serve as an alternative to physical classes with respect to FLL.</p><p>The data presented here is based on my DaF (Deutsch als Fremdsprache—German as a foreign language) teaching during the first lockdown period in India (March–May 2020). The data was collected at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (henceforth JNU), a premier state university based in New Delhi. In April 2020, JNU opted for online classes and extended the semester by 1 month to compensate for the time lost, so the data collected for this paper is from the period April to June 2020. The students I taught were intermediate learners of German: At the time of collection of data, they were in the second year of their BA program in German Studies and had done 1 year of German starting from ab-initio level in their first year. It is expected that the language proficiency of BA-2 students is at the B1 level. However, this was not entirely the case: out of the 32 student","PeriodicalId":43693,"journal":{"name":"Unterrichtspraxis-Teaching German","volume":"56 1","pages":"63-67"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/tger.12241","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43034181","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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