Unterrichtspraxis-Teaching German最新文献

German plural formation appears unsystematic and largely arbitrary to many second language (L2) learners. While some approaches have attempted to identify patterns and rules to help L2 learners (e.g., Anton et al., 2017; Di Donato & Clyde, 2020; Kraiss, 2014), one central observation from linguistic analysis has been absent from pedagogical advances: German plurals show a strong tendency to end in a syllabic trochee (e.g., Wegener, 1999; Wiese, 2000, 2001, 2009). This article seeks to bridge the gap between linguistic insights and L2 pedagogy by presenting an instructional approach integrating the trochee. We provide support for this approach based on an exploratory study comparing two groups of L2 speakers that both received several suffix-predicting rules for specific word endings and completed controlled practice exercises on plurals. Crucially, only one group received additional instruction on the prosodic pattern of German plurals. While both groups made gains, the prosodic training group showed a greater increase in confidence and accuracy in plural formation, particularly among lower-proficiency speakers. The prosodic training group also produced more trochaic plurals for nonce words, thus responding more like native speakers. Overall, we suggest that this linguistically-informed strategy might help students learn plurals more effectively by delimiting suffix options based on prosody.

This article describes the implementation of project-based learning in an upper-level German as a Foreign Language writing course at a North American university. This pedagogical approach focuses on active learning, learner autonomy, collaboration among peers, tangible products, and developing transferable skills with meaningful, real-world tasks and assessment. It reimagines the traditional teacher-centered world language classroom with the goal of helping students to develop the skills and mindset necessary to be successful life-long learners in a variety of contexts. This pedagogical report maps out the course design, texts, activities, and assessment procedures in order to function as a resource that can be adapted by other instructors. It demonstrates the potential of this approach for improving students' linguistic and non-linguistic skills and contributes to the growing body of scholarship on best practices for project-based learning in the world language classroom.

The article discusses a year-long outreach activity, “Sparking interest in German.” Five University of Utah German students engaged in the AATG/Goethe-Institut-sponsored SPARK program and taught German to local middle schoolers. At the heart of this outreach project were questions such as whether student-run outreach programs could truly spark interest in German among middle school students and whether outreach projects administered via service learning or practicum courses offer our college students a viable academic experience. The article describes the structure of the program, student learning activities, and assesses whether the goals were reached. At the end of the project, parents, middle schoolers, and university students were highly satisfied with the SPARK program and recommended continuation of the program.

The World-Readiness Standards (The National Standards Collaborative Board, 2015) and the Can-Do Statements (ACTFL, 2017) promote intercultural competence and understanding through relating cultural products to perspectives and practices. In response, numerous world languages curriculum proposals have convincingly demonstrated these entanglements. The primary investigative focus, however, often rests on perspectives and practices while casting products into a mostly supportive role. Yet products are ubiquitous, tenaciously situated at the nexus of language and cultural activities. Drawing on interdisciplinary, material-culture-based perspectives, the curriculum intervention described in this article outlines an instructional module for an intermediate German course that promotes intercultural competence by guiding learners in object inquiry to decode, relate, and transform the untranslatable concept of Heimat.

This article examines hip-hop as a vehicle for teaching social justice in college-level media and cultural studies courses taught in English or German through engagement with Black American rapper Joyner Lucas's “I'm Not Racist” (2017) and Turkish-German rapper Eko Fresh's “Aber” (2018). Drawing on hiphop's status as an art form grounded in activism, the authors propose that hip-hop offers productive avenues to learn critical media analysis in a comparative framework and develop dialogic practices that transcend the classroom space. While both tracks suggest possibilities for overcoming political differences through their staging of dialogues between opposed parties, the social, linguistic, national, and historical contexts in which each artist operates and their different approaches to these dialogues lead to two thematically and formally similar yet culturally specific tracks. The included teaching materials in this article aim to lead learners to critically examine the various forms of dialogue as they function within their individual contexts and beyond: the staged dialogue of the music videos; the critical dialogue between the videos and their audiences in the process of reception; and the transnational dialogue occurring between the artists' works. These pedagogical approaches demonstrate how hip-hop texts and contexts provide opportunities to analyze key topics such as discrimination based on race, nationality, and religion within a social justice-oriented framework.

The creation of pedagogical activities in line with genre-based approaches has substantially shaped world language curriculum design and instruction, as seen in Martin (2002a), Crane (2006), and Maxim (2004); however, an insignificant number of principled guidelines suggests exactly how to achieve these pedagogical goals (Kubota, 2016; Ryshina-Pankova, 2016; Schleppegrell, 2019). To this end, this article demonstrates how a genre-based textual analysis through the lens of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) serves as a useful methodology for advanced learners of German at the university level. It introduces a unique online venue for exploring the GDR and selects Karin Bloth's narrative Stark und ohnmächtig zugleich (2004) from this website to conduct an SFL-informed analysis regarding its generic structure, interpersonal meanings, and participant voices. The findings about the narrator's inner conflict as well as the social functions of language are directly applied to specific suggestions for pedagogical activities. The article concludes with a discussion of the benefits and implications of this methodology as a tool for world language educators to support their analyses of culturally relevant materials in order to develop content- and language-integrated pedagogical activities.

Sustainability and environmental justice are connected concepts; however, environmental justice serves as a foundation to an approach to sustainability that moves beyond conservation and preservation of resources for current and future generations to explore issues of equity in terms of access to resources and protection from environmental hazards. Examining environmental conditions for communities from an environmental justice lens uncovers disparities that suggest connections between lower socioeconomic status and exposure to environmental issues. This article addresses the need to integrate environmental justice across the German curriculum and demonstrates a case study approach for intermediate- and advanced-level German classes. The first case study presents an Instagram job application for environmental justice projects in Berlin-Neukölln, and the second case study deals with a blog about Schimmelwohnungen or apartments with mold in the city of Bremen. This article illustrates how case studies can be embedded in both a genre-based approach and how case studies on environmental justice can be integrated in courses across the German curriculum.