German Students Research Articles

Cross-country comparison of depressive symptoms and social-emotional aspects in university students from Brazil and Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic: results from two cross-sectional surveys.

The COVID-19 pandemic negatively affected students' mental health, increasing pre-existing psychosocial vulnerabilities. University students worldwide have presented differences in their mental health status; however, cross-country studies comparing students' mental health during the pandemic are lacking. To investigate potential differences between university students from Brazil and those from Germany with respect to (a) depressive symptoms and alcohol and drug consumption, (b) social and emotional aspects (loneliness, self-efficacy, perceived stress, social support and resilience) and (c) attitudes towards vaccination. Two online cross-sectional studies were conducted with university students during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil (November 2021 to March 2022) and in Germany (April to May 2022). Depressive symptoms, alcohol consumption, loneliness, self-efficacy, perceived stress, social support, resilience, sociodemographic information and attitudes towards vaccination were assessed. Data were analysed using univariate and bivariate models. The total sample comprised N = 7911 university students, with n = 2437 from Brazil and n = 5474 from Germany. Brazilian students presented significantly more depressive symptoms and suicidal thoughts, higher levels of perceived stress, higher frequency of drug or substance consumption, and lower levels of perceived social support and resilience than German students, whereas German students presented higher levels of loneliness than Brazilian students. A more favourable opinion towards vaccinations in general was found among Brazilian students compared with German students. In both countries, low-threshold (online) counselling targeting university students is needed. The differences between the samples could indicate country and/or cultural differences which justify further research in this area.

A Comparative Analysis of Collaborative Problem-Solving Skills Between German and Chinese High School Students in Chemistry

A Comparative Analysis of Collaborative Problem-Solving Skills Between German and Chinese High School Students in Chemistry

Phrase Frame Use in EFL Learners’ Argumentative Essays: A Corpus-Based Comparative Study

Recently, there has been a growing interest in the features and development of multi-word formulaic sequences for foreign language learners in the field of second language acquisition. While considerable amount of research has been conducted on continuous formulaic sequences both domestically and abroad, scant attention has been rendered to discontinuous phrase frames. Adopting a corpus linguistic perspective, the current study compares and analyses second language learners from different backgrounds with native speakers, focusing on the phrase frame features identified in the argumentative essays written by Chinese and German EFL learners. With a corpus-based approach, the four-word phrase frames are extracted from the English TOEFL essay texts of Chinese and German students using AntConc 4.1.4 corpus analysis software. The top 100 most frequently occurring phrase frames are manually filtered and then classified according to their structural and functional features to identify similarities and differences in terms of overall frequency, structure, and function features of phrase frames between two groups of learners and with those of native writers. The findings reveal that L2 learners significantly employ more fixed and predictable phrase frames than their native writers, with German L2 learners using more phrase frames than their Chinese L2 counterparts. In terms of functional features, German L2 learners use more stance and discourse organizing expressions than Chinese L2 learners. Awareness of the essay genre, English proficiency, and the time-limited writing environment are contributing factors to these features. Therefore, the study suggests that the accuracy and variety of phrase frame usage are more representative of L2 learners’ acquisition and writing quality than their quantity of use. This study facilitates an understanding of different EFL learners’ phraseological competence through the lens of their p-frame use and provides pedagogical insights accordingly into teaching and learning argumentative essays in EFL contexts.

Embracing LLM Feedback: the role of feedback providers and provider information for feedback effectiveness

Feedback is an integral part of learning in higher education and is increasingly being provided to students via modern technologies like Large Language Models (LLMs). But students’ perception of feedback from LLMs vs. feedback from educators remains unclear even though it is an important facet of feedback effectiveness. Further, feedback effectiveness can be negatively influenced by various factors; For example, (not) knowing certain characteristics about the feedback provider may bias a student’s reaction to the feedback process. To assess perceptions of LLM feedback and mitigate the negative effects of possible biases, this study investigated the potential of providing provider-information about feedback providers. In a 2×2 between-subjects design with the factors feedback provider (LLM vs. educator) and provider-information (yes vs. no), 169 German students evaluated feedback message and provider perceptions. Path analyses showed that the LLM was perceived as more trustworthy than an educator and that the provision of provider-information led to improved perceptions of the feedback. Furthermore, the effect of the provider and the feedback on perceived trustworthiness and fairness changed when provider-information was provided. Overall, our study highlights the importance of further research on feedback processes that include LLMs due to their influential nature and suggests practical recommendations for designing digital feedback processes.

Meritocracy seen through the eyes of its champions: a comparative study of educational elites

This paper explores the way in which elite students from Germany and Romania understand the role of talent, effort, and structural factors in shaping educational success and failure. The image of a successful student aligns with the requirements of the selection processes, with Romanian students emphasising effort, and German students projecting an image of effortless achievement. Although most students acknowledged structural inequalities played into the selection processes, they did not seem to doubt the intelligence and skills of those who were selected to the most prestigious tracks and streams. By exploring the way in which students at prestigious universities talk about success and failure, this paper captures some ways in which they resist reproducing meritocratic discourses, and other ways in which they perpetuate the myth of meritocracy.

The Problem of Teaching Romanian as a Foreign Language to Students at Faculties of Medicine II

The case study we propose is conducted on the practical courses of Romanian for foreign students in the first and second years of study at the Faculty of Medicine, who embark on a process of acquisition of phonetic and lexical information, grammar, culture, and especially notions of specialised communication. The assertion we start from is that the common feature that foreign students share is that they are speakers of various languages – Romance languages, Germanic, Slavic, Turkic, Finno-Ugric ones etc. The characteristic feature of student groups at Medicine is that there are few students with oral and written communication skills in Romanian (expect Slavic speakers, who live in neighbouring countries – Bulgaria, Serbia, etc) and they will be integrated, for methodological reasons in Group A. The proposed objective here is to study the role of language contact in making the teaching of Romanian more effective. Similarly few are the students who master theoretical notions of Phonetics and Morphology (German students and those who come from Albania) who belong to group B. The aspect to be studied in depth in the case of Group B students focuses on the need for a contrastive, comparative method of teaching Romanian. Arabic students, those coming from India, USA, Nordic countries, France, Portugal, Spain who never came into contact with speakers of Romanian do not have the ability to communicate with speakers of Romanian nor the capacity to understand various simple messages, reason for which they are placed in Group C. Access to theoretical concepts of Romanian grammar is very difficult for students in this latter group. The general conclusion to be drawn is that teaching Romanian as a foreign language to students of Medicine is a permanent challenge regarding methodology, didactic strategies, and particularities of their native tongues.

On the spurious effect of intergroup friendship on outgroup attitudes in schools: The role of social influence and the positive impact of exposure to outgroup peers.

Promoting intergroup friendships in schools is regarded as a powerful strategy for improving outgroup attitudes. However, stochastic actor-oriented modelling (SAOM) studies have often revealed no association between intergroup friendship and outgroup attitudes. I investigated whether SAOM studies reported no effect of intergroup friendship on outgroup attitudes, what was responsible for this surprising finding and whether exposure to outgroup peers was positively related to outgroup attitudes. The meta-analysis of SAOM studies confirms no association between intergroup friendship and outgroup attitudes. Examining longitudinal social network data of 2700 German students, I found that a positive link between intergroup friendship and outgroup attitudes appeared only when I did not control for social influence. This indicates that intergroup friendship did not automatically improve outgroup attitudes. Instead, the development of outgroup attitudes among students depended on social influence and, thus, the quality of outgroup attitudes among their outgroup friends. Exposure to outgroup peers was, however, positively associated with outgroup attitudes. These findings reframe intergroup contact theory by suggesting that intergroup friendship is not essential for improving outgroup attitudes. Rather, social influence and exposure to outgroup peers could be key factors shaping outgroup attitudes.

Effects of an adapted peer-assisted learning strategies reading programme on reading fluency and reading comprehension of secondary students with or at-risk for reading disabilities

ABSTRACT The acquisition of reading skills in a person’s native language is a key life component to functioning successfully within their society. Unfortunately, many German students have significant reading difficulties in their native language, German. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to translate into German and implement a promising U.S. reading programme that focuses on fluency and comprehension: Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS Reading 2–6). PALS has shown positive effects for English elementary and secondary students with or at risk for reading disabilities. Therefore, this project conducted a pilot Single Subject multiple baseline design study with eight 7th grade students with or at risk for reading disabilities, to explore the feasibility of implementing PALS in German. Results showed improvement in German reading comprehension and fluency for these students after five sessions along with stability at follow-up conducted after six weeks. Limitations of the study and areas for further research are discussed, as well as implications for practitioners.

‘All children have a skateboards’. Differences between the grammaticality of reading mistakes of monolingual and bilingual elementary school children

ABSTRACT Linguistic abilities are vital for reading. Due to the complementary principle, arbitrary and partly rule-governed linguistic knowledge and structures are more challenging for bilingual than monolingual children. It is conceivable that this difference also influences the reading process of bilingual children and leads to different types of mistakes made while reading compared to monolingual children. The present study explores potential differences between bilingual Turkish-German and monolingual German students from grades three and four in elementary school (n = 87) in regard to the grammaticality of reading mistakes while reading aloud. Using secondary data, bilingual students were matched pairwise to the monolingual students on the basis of oral reading fluency to ensure equal reading abilities before surface features and grammaticality of reading mistakes were analysed with an adaptation of Reading Miscue Analysis. MANOVAs comparing Turkish-German bilingual and German monolingual students indicate significant differences concerning the grammaticality of mistakes made: Monolinguals produced more reading mistakes preserving grammaticality, while bilinguals produced more mistakes violating grammaticality. Moreover, post-hoc tests showed that both groups differ significantly in omissions leading to mistakes preserving or violating grammaticality. Potential causes for these differences as well as the adequacy of the adaptation of Reading Miscue Analysis will be discussed.

Knowledge about human papillomaviruses among students in Germany-a cross-sectional study with aneed for action

The human papillomavirus (HPV) is one of the most common viruses transmitted through intimate contact, causing many benign and malignant diseases. Vaccination protects against these diseases. Despite the HPV vaccination being recommended by the Standing Committee on Vaccination (STIKO), knowledge and vaccination rates in Germany are very low. Therefore, the aim of the study was to assess the HPV knowledge among German students. Between 06/2019 and 01/2024, anationwide online survey on HPV knowledge among students in Germany was distributed via the respective student councils. The survey included two aspects: 1)basic characteristics of the participants and 2)knowledge questions about HPV (e.g., transmission routes, effectiveness, and side effects of vaccination, knowledge about the HPV subtypes). Data collection was anonymous. Atotal of 459 students took part in the study. Of these, 335 (72.98%) were female, 122 (26.57%) were male, and2 (0.45%) did not specify their gender. The average age of the students was 24.02 years, and most of the participants were in their 6th (23.31%/107) semester. In all, 75.82% (348) of the participants were medical students followed by law students with 19.61% (90) participants. The most represented study location was Aachen, with 270 (58.82%) participants. Only about half (48.80%/223) of the students knew that approximately 8000 new cancer cases in Germany are HPV-associated annually. Regarding the HPV vaccination, more than athird (35.82%/163) of participants did not know that it also protects against genital warts, while 21.93% (100) did not know that boys can also benefit from the HPV vaccination and that it does not only improve HPV protection of girls against cervical cancer. Despite several years of HPV vaccination recommendation by the Standing Committee on Vaccination (STIKO), knowledge about HPV among college students still remains very low. Further prevention and educational efforts are needed to address HPV knowledge gaps, with the additional goal of improving HPV vaccination rates.

Exploring the heterogeneous development of intrinsic value in language arts among secondary school students through growth mixture modelling

Research indicates that, on average, students' intrinsic value in language arts declines throughout school. According to situated expectancy-value theory, however, not all students follow the same developmental trajectory. This study examined interindividual differences in this development from Grades 5–7 using growth mixture modelling (N = 1325 German students). We further studied how gender, socioeconomic status, prior achievement, and classroom climate predicted trajectory class membership. We identified five intrinsic value trajectory classes, with most, but not all, students best classified into a declining class. Classes' initial value levels differed. Girls were more likely than boys to be grouped into a trajectory class characterized by a high or moderate initial value that slightly decreased, as were students who perceived their classroom climate as more positive. Class membership was associated with subsequent achievement. Our findings underscore the necessity for educators and researchers to recognize intrinsic value heterogeneity within classrooms.

Social Comparisons Under Pandemic Stress: Income Reference Groups, Comparison Patterns, and the Subjective Well-Being of German Students

People use social comparisons to reduce uncertainty when facing new or stressful situations. This study explores how a stressful experience, the COVID-19 pandemic, changed how people compare their income. It relates these changes to subjective well-being (SWB). We use a repeated cross-sectional dataset of students at two German universities from before and during the pandemic. A novel survey instrument is employed to identify individualized reference groups used for income comparison and to analyze whether the comparison pattern changed. Our results reveal that, while there was little change in the size of the reference groups, there was some difference in the group composition. During the pandemic, survey respondents were more likely to select two types of individuals into their reference groups: relatives and people they only knew from social media. Income comparisons were beginning to have a negative association with SWB, while the relation had been positive before the pandemic. Moreover, upward income comparisons increased.

„... dass sich halt keiner ausgeschlossen fühlt.“ Wahrnehmungen von und Einstellungen zur Verwendung nicht-deutscher Erstsprachen im Unterricht

Abstract This article examines perceptions of and attitudes towards the use of non-German languages in Austrian schools from the perspective of students and teachers. By differentiating between teachers, students with exclusively German L1 and students with a non-German L1, different perspectives on code-switching in group work situations are examined. For this purpose, data was collected via online questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions between students. The results show that switching to another language in group work settings is perceived as inappropriate, in particular by those students who have no competence in a language other than German. Moreover, they associate switching with poorer performance in class and interpret the use of a language other than German in class to be antagonistic or talking behind the back of people who do not speak that language (“gossiping”). In contrast, – and contrary to the assumption that they evaluate language switches in the classroom more negatively due to stricter normative views – teachers show a consistently more positive perception of code switching behaviour and its multilingual speakers. It can be concluded from the findings that multilingualism in the school context and its overall benefits should not only be addressed in teacher training, but that it would also be useful to raise students’ awareness of multilingual practices.

PEMEROLEHAN BAHASA INDONESIA PADA SANTRI ASAL JERMAN DI SMP THURSINA IIBS MALANG

Language learning is based on the belief that a second language can only be acquired through a deliberate and conscious learning process. The development of second language acquisition is not only from local languages to Indonesian or Indonesian to English or vice versa. Foreigners who learn Indonesian are usually called (BIPA) Indonesian for Foreign Speakers. This research study is to describe the process of acquiring Indonesian as the second language of German students at Thursina IIBS Malang Junior High School. This research uses descriptive qualitative research which will describe in detail about the process of Indonesian language acquisition of German students at Thursina IIBS Junior High School in Malang. Where the source of data used is the German students themselves. The data collection procedure is taken by listening and interviewing the research subject. As a result, the Indonesian language acquisition of German students has been learnt before going to Indonesia. Upon arrival in Indonesia, German students acquire Indonesian from (a) the environment of the Thursina IIBS Malang boarding school and (b) from the BIPA subject class. Meanwhile, the ability to write free essays using Indonesian is still not fully perfect, because the influence of the Indonesian language received when outside the classroom is greater than when in the classroom.

The effect of achievement composition on STEM competencies: Analyzing longitudinal data of German students’ scientific and computer literacy in secondary school.

The effect of achievement composition on STEM competencies: Analyzing longitudinal data of German students’ scientific and computer literacy in secondary school.

Assessment of Interactional Competence in L2 German: Integrating an innovative rubric to help language teachers effectively evaluate pragmatics

Research on the development of second language (L2) interactional competence (IC) has shown that IC is vital for L2 speakers' participation in the social world of the L2 and thus an important aspect of pragmatic competence. To date, however, there is little work on the education of future language teachers in the assessment of their learners' IC. More specifically, there is no research on language teachers' experiences using a rubric that focuses on specific interactional sequential features. We address this gap by presenting a study on training L2 German instructors to assess German response tokens — e.g., achso or echt. Building on a prior study on L2 German students' use of response tokens, this paper presents a study on devising a new, specific IC rubric on response tokens. By having L2 instructors use this new IC rubric, we show the advantages and disadvantages of the rubric concentrated around response tokens. Moreover, by collecting L2 instructors’ feedback via survey data on their experience, opinions, and concerns, we illustrate the importance of integrating response tokens into rubrics. We conclude the paper by considering pedagogical implications for language teacher education. The findings show that language instructors need input on the interactional function of response tokens and that instructors view assessing L2 interaction using a sequentially focused rubric as generally positive.

Supplemental Material for The Effect of Achievement Composition on STEM Competencies: Analyzing Longitudinal Data of German Students’ Scientific and Computer Literacy in Secondary School

Supplemental Material for The Effect of Achievement Composition on STEM Competencies: Analyzing Longitudinal Data of German Students’ Scientific and Computer Literacy in Secondary School

German and Taiwanese secondary students’ mathematical modelling task value profiles and their relation to mathematical knowledge and modelling performance

German and Taiwanese secondary students’ mathematical modelling task value profiles and their relation to mathematical knowledge and modelling performance

Identitätsarbeit und Rollenverständnis durch persönliche Narrationen in Virtuellen Austauschen zwischen deutschen und israelischen Studierenden

Digitalization is essential in daily life, especially in education, and has been further emphasized by the COVID-19 pandemic since 2020. Schools and universities are demanding digital development. To date, little progress has been made in virtual and transnational exchange programs for foreign language student teachers from diverse cultural backgrounds. These learners could greatly benefit from enhanced development of foreign language and intercultural communicative competencies (O’Dowd 2006, 2021). A group of Israeli and German students took part in a four-week virtual exchange project. The students collaborated on concepts for their future foreign language classroom, drawing from their (digital) pandemic experiences. Zoom meetings were recorded and multimodally transcribed for research purposes. The essay provides insight into a conducted PhD research project analyzing online personal narratives resulting from given impulses and assigned tasks. Using a phenomenological approach, an example sequence was selected. The findings will illuminate the discourse development of participants' secondary conversations („off-task-talks“) and their (situated) concept of roles and identities presented in the discourse.

The effect of linguistic and extralinguistic features on EFL adverb placement

Abstract Larsson et al. (2020) emphasize the importance of taking linguistic variables (e.g., verb type) into consideration in studies of adverb placement. This study looks at the positional distribution of 15 epistemic adverbs from texts written by L1 Turkish, German, and English students, with the aim of testing whether the findings from Larsson et al. can be generalized to a different register (argumentative writing) and a typologically more distant language (Turkish). We also revisit the question of whether there is L1 transfer. The results confirm Larsson et al.’s finding that the main predictors of adverb placement are linguistic, although some register differences were noted, such as higher frequencies of adverbs in the argumentative texts. Furthermore, the L1 Turkish students made especially frequent use of the clause-initial position (e.g., probably she is here).