Students’ perception of the impact of (meta)linguistic knowledge on learning German

At Makerere University, foreign language courses in French, German and Arabic are attended by a variety of students at beginner, advanced and voluntary levels. Language students either learn foreign languages as service courses within the framework of academic programmes such as Tourism and Secretarial Studies, or as fully-fledged subjects at undergraduate level. In spite of the emphasis on language skills in job advertisements in the Ugandan press, the teaching of foreign languages tends to be oriented more towards theoretical requirements of academic (language) programmes and numbers of students, rather than toward the intensity of language contact, quality of language courses and students as well as standardised language course evaluations. The criteria for the selection of potential language students and the language learning policy are problematic and partly the cause of the unpopularity of language courses. On the basis of the evaluation of the course "German for Secretarial Studies", the current paper outlines challenges of teaching and learning German as a foreign language. There seems to be a discrepancy between the language skills that job markets require from university graduates and the skills which graduates are likely, at present, to acquire upon completion of their foreign language courses. The paper also focuses on factors that constitute barriers to foreign language learning and recommends ways in which foreign language students and teachers can exploit the potential of the budding Ugandan language industry.

An Interview with Paula Garrett-Rucks, Georgia State University

Retaining quality teachers and declining numbers of language programs that will help students reach the goal of high proficiency levels for their success in today’s world has been a challenge in recent years. Language teachers have a great role to play in addressing the 21st-century learning needs of the students, e.g., critical thinking skills, which greatly rely on their innovative teaching pedagogies. This current study aimed to investigate the preparedness and effectiveness of the preservice English teachers with their instructional strategies in integrating critical thinking skills in language instruction. The population of the study was comprised of preservice English teachers assigned in secondary schools during their practice teaching stage. A modified researcher-made questionnaire-checklist was developed and validated with items on a four-point Likert Scale used to evaluate the strategies employed in integrating critical thinking skills in English language teaching through consecutive actual classroom teaching observations by the two (2) groups of mentors and by the preservice teachers themselves. The data revealed that based on the three (3) raters, the preservice English teachers have extensively integrated critical thinking skills in language instruction through the use of the higher-order- level of questioning along with analyzing, evaluating, and creating. The reported highest mean was in creating, and the lowest was in evaluating. The PSETs' extent of integration of critical thinking skills was secondly manifested through the provision of communicative tasks. The PSETs have signified three (3) communicative tasks that obtained the highest mean scores: [24] role plays (mean=3.53), [25] paired-shared activities (mean=3.52), and [19] small group work (mean=3.51). Likewise, they have identified the three (3) communicative activities with the lowest means, namely: [23] keeping a diary (mean=2.54), [6] interviews (mean=2.55), and jigsaw activities (mean=2.62). It was concluded that the preservice English teachers have extensively integrated critical thinking skills in English language teaching though there are instructional strategies along with questioning strategy through the use of higher-order-level of questions and the provision of communicative tasks that garnered low mean scores which recommend preservice English teachers to enhance maximum utilization of these teaching skills for effective integration of critical thinking skills in language instruction and eventually cater the learning needs of the 21st-century language learners. Hence, a capability enhancement program or training on the integration of critical thinking skills to preservice English teachers was also recommended based on the findings of the study.

Evaluating the factor structure of the Dutch individual differences in language skills (IDLaS-NL) test battery.

language spend at least one term in a special intensive course, unless they can demonstrate by examination or otherwise that they have already had preparation comparable to that afforded by a year of intensive study at Yale. For a second term these students should be provided with a special intensive course in literature (20 course). 4. That students successfully completing either of these programs be qualified to enter courses in literature conducted entirely in the language in question (present 40 courses). It is believed that these courses could continue with the present allotment of three class-hours a week. 5. That the intensive beginning language course (10), or the special intensive language and literature course (20), taken for a full year count for two courses in credit, and that the successful completion of either of these courses satisfy the modern language requirement of Yale College. 6. That intensive language courses be allowed ten hours per week; in general, two regular class-hours and four sessions of two hours each in drill, and that this count as two-fifths of the student's program. 7. That every effort be made to encourage students who have completed an intensive language course to make use of the language in courses in literature, area courses, in science, or research in the humanities. 8. That the administration of this program be entrusted to an inter-departmental Committee consisting of one representative each from the departments concerned, and one representative from the Department of Linguistics. It will be noticed that in the matter of time the Committee has departed from the recommendations of the memorandum of the linguistic teachers. The reasons are mainly those of expediency. It would be practically impossible to fit into the present undergraduate schedules a course requiring three-fifths of a student's time during one term only. The Committee, however, has a good deal of confidence in the intensive method, occupying the greater part of the student's time, and suggests that the University in the future might well arrange for such courses in the summer ... NORMAN S. BUCK WILLIAM C. DEVANE HARRY M. HUBBELL

A motivational survey conducted in the De partment of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Washington University in St. Louis in the fall of 2004 found that 60.5% of students in beginning, intermediate and advanced German dasses con sidered literature to be an important component of their German instruction.1 While this percentage has certainly fluctuated during the years in which this survey has been administered [2002-2006], the relative consistency of the student response to the inclusion of literature testifies to the value stu dents place on literature for language acquisition. But how this interest can best be nurtured and en couraged to develop and how it may best serve the related but unique goal of language acquisition is open to widespread interpretation in light of the various obstacles faced on all levels of foreign lan guage courses. In order to provide sufficient enter tainment value to maintain student engagement and tempt students to examine German cultural expression from a lighter angle, an upper-division German literature course was designed to focus on humor. Along with this heightened entertainment value unfortunately can come a heightened level of difficulty of comprehension, which often makes foreign-language humor appear too daunting, and therefore an undesirable task. Despite the difficulty of comprehending humor in second language literature, it was nonetheless selected as the organizing principle for an upper division course on German literature-German 4104-in the Spring semesters of 2003 and 2006, Studies in Genre: In Search of German Humor.2 Because it was felt that humor offers such unique insights into German history, culture and psychol ogy, it is too precious a resource to be rejected as a topic of discussion due to the level of difficulty, without adequate effort exerted toward its integra tion. Furthermore, humor has been attributed with the accomplishment of four main interactional tasks: [creating] affiliation and [strengthening] bonds between people, [... providing] a means of expressing negative feelings indirectly, [... en abling the] display and [negotiation of] both indi vidual and group identity and [... serving] as a means of protecting one's positive face (Bell 26-27). The goals for this course, which drew its numbers from advanced sophomores, juniors and seniors, were to investigate the nature, purposes and audiences of various genres of German hu mor, as well as to continue practice of the German language with special emphasis upon writing. Our area of study ranged from some of the earliest in carnations of humor in the Schwanke of der Stricker in the thirteenth century to the eth nic-comedy concept of 21st-century comedian, Kaya Yanar-a German of Turkish-Arabic descent -with every endeavor made to quash assertions of the Germans as a humorless people. The focus of this arficle is on the latter portion of the course

This article focuses on the Connections goal of the National Standards—i.e., on the integration of interdisciplinary content and language skills. Although content has always played some role in foreign language courses, the complexities of “connections” to academic content are far from being realized in the current foreign language teaching and learning environment. Consequently, this article proposes a developmental model for content‐oriented instruction that moves students from familiar to unfamiliar academic and cultural content while also taking into account their language level at each stage. In the process, the article offers suggestions on how to avoid the “sudden jumps” in difficulty, characteristic of language and literature courses both in high school and college, which lead to so much student/teacher frustration as well as to often dramatic drops in enrollment from level to level.

Background. Since the outbreak of a large-scale war in Ukraine on 24 February 2022, tens of thousands of Ukrainian children have found themselves in a situation of forced migration, had to adapt to the Austrian school system, learn a new foreign language and adapt to a new team and teachers. The main task of the school was to create a safe, stable and reliable environment. But at the same time, a school in Austria is a place where another language is spoken and taught, which added even more stress to the difficult situation in which Ukrainian students found themselves. In this context, the possibility of identifying, recognising and supporting the potential of a child in forced migration, which is fully reflected in the process of written or oral communication in the mother tongue, as opposed to communication in a foreign language, plays a significant role in establishing emotional and psychological balance and influences the acquisition of a new language. Purpose. The aim of the article is to highlight the peculiarities of interaction between the native Ukrainian language and German as a language of instruction in Austria in written communication using the tool for analysing the acquisition of early written language competence developed within the framework of the international ELA project. Methods. To achieve the aim of the study, the tool for analysing the acquisition of early written language competence ELA (Erfassung früher literaler Aktivitäten in Ukrainisch, Türkisch, Russisch und Deutsch) was used, which aims to identify and analyse the early bilingual or multilingual written competence of children based on samples of written texts. ELA provides an opportunity to consider the process of acquiring German as a language of instruction from a resource-based perspective and can also serve as a basis for purely scientific research. The method of elicitation was used to obtain the sample texts. The elicitation was carried out with the help of a stimulus-illustration and a stimulus-sentence formulated in Ukrainian and German. Results. Based on the resource-based approach to learning a foreign language, it can be stated that the mother tongue is the resource that allows us to see the child’s abilities that remain hidden if we take into account only German-language texts. The collected and analysed written samples show that more creativity and diversity in linguistic means are recorded in texts written in the mother tongue. An interesting observation was that characters and aspects that go beyond situational depiction (illustration from Serena Romanelli’s children’s book ‘Kleiner Dodo, was spielst du?’) are almost exclusively found in texts written in the mother tongue, where descriptions are much more detailed and differ from texts written in German in being more emotional and imaginative. Texts in German are shorter and have a simpler structure. In the absence of certain words, the children replaced them with their Ukrainian or English equivalents and gave proper names to animals whose names were unknown to them in German. This strategy allowed them not to remain silent and successfully complete the task. In the German-language samples, nouns that did not come at the beginning of a sentence were often written with a lowercase letter, which can be interpreted as a transfer of Ukrainian spelling to German. The names of animals in some Ukrainian-language samples were capitalised, even if they did not appear at the beginning of the sentence. It can be assumed that these animals were perceived as the main characters of the story, or that the German spelling rules, where all nouns are capitalised, were transferred to the Ukrainian language. Very often, the main character was used in the diminutive form, which is typical for the Ukrainian language. Discussion. The ELA tool makes it possible to objectively assess the abilities and skills of children whose mother tongue is not German, to perceive their mother tongue as a resource and to promote the successful acquisition of German as the language of instruction in Austria. The testing of the tool for analysing the acquisition of early written competence by teachers of German as a language of instruction has allowed to change the focus and move from a monolingual (namely, German) and deficit-oriented approach to a multilingual and mother tongue-oriented approach to learning a second foreign language, which corresponds to the modern pedagogical strategy called Translanguaging, which allows students to use the entire language repertoire in solving problems.

This chapter reports our work on the Açaí Project, a teacher-training programme specifically for Indigenous schoolteachers, focusing on Indigenous schools’ primary years. The project was created in 1997 by the State Education Department of Rondônia (Secretaria Estadual de Educação). The Açaí Project is coordinated by the department with the objective of training native speaker teachers to teach primary years in Indigenous schools. We worked on three stages of this project: preparing pedagogical materials, teaching classes about the Portuguese language and Indigenous languages, and supervising internships. The content was developed in the relevant mother tongues to enhance native speaker teachers’ linguistic knowledge not of but about their mother tongues. Each class was composed of Indigenous students from different ethnolinguistic groups; on average, more than twenty-five languages, mostly endangered, were represented in any given class. The language of instruction was Portuguese because it was the only one known by all the students. The application of our methods sheds light on how to teach the students’ mother tongues, enabling them to produce and share various materials such as vocabulary lists, linguistic expressions, and narratives. This allowed us to promote a stimulating and lively interaction between the students and enabled interactive discussions and learning moments. At the end of the training, each student was equipped to adapt their linguistic knowledge to their own cultural and linguistic reality and to promote their languages, cultures, and traditions and empower their communities.

The present investigation explores and presents a theoretical model of instruction—applied literacy in second language education (ALL2E)—and suggests a contemporary view of the roles of grammar and formal evaluation within literature‐based second language (L2) classrooms. Essentially, this article addresses the question “How can instruction and discourse in this setting he framed in order to provide opportunities for language learning and cognitive development for its participants?” Research in the area of literature‐based L2 classrooms is reviewed before explaining and clarifying the elements involved during traditional text‐based talk. ALL2E is clearly defined and differentiated from current approaches within literature‐based L2 classrooms.

ABSTRACTThe aim of the current study is to investigate motion event cognition in second language learners in a higher education context. Based on recent findings that speakers of grammatical aspect languages like English attend less to the endpoint (goal) of events than do speakers of nonaspect languages like Swedish in a nonverbal categorization task involving working memory (Athanasopoulos & Bylund, 2013; Bylund & Athanasopoulos, 2015), the current study asks whether native speakers of an aspect language start paying more attention to event endpoints when learning a nonaspect language. Native English and German (a nonaspect language) speakers, and English learners of L2 German, who were pursuing studies in German language and literature at an English university, were asked to match a target scene with intermediate degree of endpoint orientation with two alternate scenes with low and high degree of endpoint orientation, respectively. Results showed that, compared to the native English speakers, the learners of German were more prone to base their similarity judgements on endpoint saliency, rather than ongoingness, primarily as a function of increasing L2 proficiency and year of university study. Further analyses revealed a nonlinear relationship between length of L2 exposure and categorization patterns, subserved by a progressive strengthening of the relationship between L2 proficiency and categorization as length of exposure increased. These findings present evidence that cognitive restructuring may occur through increasing experience with an L2, but also suggest that this relationship may be complex and unfold over a long period of time.

The language proficiency of university students is considered a key factor for knowledge acquisition and success in higher education. Recent research has revealed a connection between language proficiency and academic performance. Some studies identified certain groups of learners who show deficits in language proficiency when entering higher education and who can be considered to be vulnerable groups who need particular support. The present study analyzes the level of proficiency in the language of instruction among two vulnerable groups of students at the beginning of their university studies: (i) students with a refugee background and a mother tongue other than English enrolled in English-language study programs (1st group) and (ii) students at regular German universities with a mother tongue other than German (2nd group). In both groups, the students’ language proficiency was assessed using validated test instruments. 1,375 students with a refugee background (1st group) took a C-test on an online platform to assess their English language proficiency. For the second group, the Test of German as a foreign language was used. The Test of German as a foreign language was also used to assess students at regular German universities whose mother tongue was German, which allows us to present comparative analyses between these groups in this paper. To analyze the assessments of English and German language skills on the same metric, the test results of both samples were converted into the categories used by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. The majority of students with a refugee background did not achieve the minimum level (B2) required for university studies. The group of university students whose mother tongue was not German also showed deficits in their language proficiency, which indicates a need for support. To foster sufficient language proficiency among students in higher education, effective language offerings for refugee students and students with a migration background should be implemented with a particular focus on core concepts and terms in their field of study.KeywordsLanguage proficiencyUniversity studentsRefugee backgroundMother tongueEnglish language proficiencyTest of German as a foreign language

Abstract: Over past several decades, listening comprehension has not received a great deal of focus in foreign/second language acquisition (SLA) research compared to other skills and competencies. Although there is growing research on instructional techniques and strategies to enhance those skills in earlier stages of second language (L2) learning, there is little investigation of text-related factors, as well as individual learner factors, that may contribute to advanced-level listening skills. This paper reports on a pilot study on both textual and individual factors for advanced-level listening comprehension. Twenty-seven advanced learners of L2 German served as participants, along with 10 native speaker controls, for multiple-choice listening items including both short and extended listening texts. In addition, a background survey assessed language-contact factors to look for significant influence on advanced-level listening comprehension. T test and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) tests show that nonnative speakers do not differ significantly from native speaker controls for these tasks, but that confidence in interpreting meaning was significant for certain item types. Correlational analyses point to several language contact factors that indicate both quantity and quality of L2 experience were significant for overall listening comprehension accuracy, as well as for confidence. Based on these preliminary findings, more research is recommended to explore experiential variables that may predict advanced attainment in listening. Key words: adults, German as a second language, learner factors, listening, second language (L2) learning Language: German Introduction Canale and Swain's (1980) description of communicative competence was groundbreaking in its description of second language (L2) competencies beyond mere grammatical accuracy. Discourse, strategic, and sociolinguistic know-how were cited as distinct, though interconnected, competencies. As a result, ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines have spelled out clear recommendations for advanced-level abilities in communicative realm, including ability to initiate, sustain and bring to closure a wide variety of communicative tasks (Buck, Brynes, & Thompson, 1989). All such communicative skills rely not only on lexical, grammatical, topical, and cultural knowledge-their foundation is comprehension. While is arguably cornerstone of interpersonal communication, and several foreign language methods have stressed its significance for overall fluency, listening skills have traditionally been labeled as passive or receptive, even though listening comprehension is active, complex process-in some ways, independent from other skills (see Hirai, 1999; Lund, 1991; Wong, 2001). In early discussions of communicative competence, little direct attention was paid to listening as a distinct skill set. The ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines (1989) described advanced learners as able to comprehend standard dialect at a normal rate, and able to glean main idea and most supporting details for everyday topics. While most current textbooks do emphasize importance of listening skills, there is still no solid consensus on how to best teach listening. Some have contended that field of foreign language teaching has viewed listening less as a set of skills and more as an activity to be used in foreign language instruction (Feyten, 1991, p. 175 [italics added]). Cook, in fact, suggested that listening may not be directly teachable, and that the best teacher can do is to devise amusing activities during which natural listening abilities can be automatically activated (1991, p. 61). Ultimately, field may have placed too much emphasis on speaking, in hope that other skill areas will more or less fall in line behind it (James, 1985, p. 5). As teachers, we may tend toward assumption that listening develops naturally where focus is on comprehensible input (see Krashen, 1981, 1996). …

In recent years, enrollment in German classes at American universities has fallen drastically. Excepted from this unfortunate trend, however, have been programs that are devoted to teaching languages for specific purposes (LSP), most prominently in the areas of business German and German for science and technology.' Many of these programs not only have received favorable attention from educational leaders because their efforts genuinely support the current trend to internationalize the curriculum,2 they have also been able to retain their enrollments or even to attract new groups of students into their language classes. The number of German majors at the University of Rhode Island, for example, has risen sharply in recent years, mostly due to the success of its International Engineering Program (IEP). In this five-year program students earn both a B.A. in German and a B.S. in Engineering. A sixmonth paid professional internship with a German-speaking engineering company is an essential component of the program, which also enables students to study for a semester at the Technische Universitat Braunschweig.3 In 1987, before the IEP program was instituted, the University of Rhode Island had six students majoring in German. Most German courses then were language courses at the elementary and intermediate level, offered to meet the two-year language training required for a degree in the College of Arts and Sciences. Since the beginning of the IEP program, the numbers of German majors at URI have increased exponentially; as of Fall 2000, 91 students major in German at URI, with approximately eighty of them enrolled in the dual degree program with the College of Engineering. It is interesting to note that the growth of the German program at URI is not limited to the International Engineering Program, but has also boosted the number of German majors. Since 1987, the number of liberal arts majors not concurrently enrolled in a professional degree program has almost doubled.4 Because of the increased enrollment, faculty at URI can now offer more German culture and literature courses at the upper levels than before. Rather than watering down the traditional liberal arts aspect of the German program-as critics of the program have feared-the success of the International Engineering Program has actually strengthened these

This article aims to describe podcast media as an alternative to online learning and to stimulate students' language skills. During the Covid-19 pandemic, face-to-face learning was converted into online learning or learning from home (BDR). This requires teachers or lecturers to be more creative and innovative in choosing learning media or making teaching materials that can achieve learning objectives. Likewise, students are required to have skills in using learning media. The use of podcast media is one of the alternatives used in learning by lecturers, such as several courses in the Indonesian Language and Literature Education program, FKIP, Suryakancana University. The method in this research is descriptive qualitative. The data collection technique used a google form questionnaire with Indonesian Literature and Language Education student respondents. Questionnaire in the form of student responses about learning using podcast media and stimulation in student language skills. In this study, language skills were focused on listening and speaking skills