PERCEPTUAL-ARTICULATORY ASPECTS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF GERMAN-SPEAKING VARIATIVE COMPETENCE

Abstract

The given article highlights a relevant question of methodology, namely, how well students who study German as a foreign language can distinguish national versions of German by ear. It is thus about the development of variable competence of students, as well as the level of tolerance for the perception of national versions of the German language. As it is known, since the 1980s, the German language has acquired the status of a pluricentric language with national centers located in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. On the one hand, there is the problem of insufficient level of development of perceptual competence of students in the perception of national versions of the German language, which is noted by many scholars, which determines the relevance of this study. On the other hand, however, it is necessary to take into account the target group and the level of students, so that the pluricentric approach does not become an additional burden in learning a foreign language. Our focus is on the language of the media, namely audio recordings of Austrian and federal German television. The study involved German students of the 4th and 8th semesters of study, who, after listening to audio recordings, filled out a questionnaire designed specifically for this study. During the first audition, it was necessary to establish the national version of the German language in which the news releases sound. The second task of the study was to establish pronunciation variants that especially distinguish the federal-German standard pronunciation from the Austrian national variant of the German language. As the results show, there is no doubt about the influence of the media language of Germany on some sound realizations. We can assume that it could be not only about linguistic, but also about complex psychological processes and ultimately about the persuasive influence of sound media language on the individual.