The importance of raising teachers’ and students’ awareness of pragmatics in German second language writing: a study of the effect of grammatical and lexical errors compared to pragma-linguistic infelicities

Abstract

One of the new scales in the CEFR Companion Volume is online interaction. The new descriptors cover goal-oriented online transactions, including written correspondence and the use of formulaic language. In Dutch business schools, students learn German for special purposes at B1/2 level: they are expected to master German in a professional context well enough to facilitate interactions and transactions. The question is how their not always flawless attempts at inviting a German colleague to a meeting are received by L1 language users. Is the level of B1/2 German sufficient to avoid bothersome situations? Is these learners’ mastery at B1/2 level sufficient to maintain a good relationship with a German partner? This study investigated whether communicative clashes might occur because of flawed German language use. Ninety-eight German business professionals, all L1 speakers of German, were asked to rate pragma-linguistic infelicities and syntactic, lexical and morphological errors in 16 business e-mails written by Dutch learners of German, using a 7-point Likert scale. The results showed that pragma-linguistic infelicities were considered more bothersome than syntactic, lexical or morphological errors, which suggests that L2 German writing courses should raise more explicit awareness of pragma-linguistic forces in intercultural communication. This idea is in line with recommendations contained in the new Companion Volume. Furthermore, it was studied whether knowledge of the writer’s foreign provenance and Dutch nationality affected the judgement of the German professionals. This was not the case.