German Grammar in the Students' Words: The "Essentialization" of German Grammar by American College-Level Learners

Autor/in	Chavez, Monika
Titel	German Grammar in the Students' Words: The "Essentialization" of German Grammar by American College-Level Learners
Quelle	In: Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German, 44 (2011) 2, S.83-97 (15 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0042-062X
DOI	10.1111/j.1756-1221.2011.00098.x
Schlagwörter	Beginning Teachers; German; College Students; Second Language Learning; Second Language Instruction; Grammar; Student Attitudes; English; Sociocultural Patterns; Language Attitudes; Educational Change; Educational Objectives; Language Teachers; Teacher Education Programs; Graduate Study + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Junior teacher; Junglehrer; Deutscher; Collegestudent; Zweitsprachenerwerb; Fremdsprachenunterricht; Grammatik; Schülerverhalten; English language; Englisch; Soziokulturelle Theorie; Sprachverhalten; Bildungsreform; Educational objective; Bildungsziel; Erziehungsziel; Language teacher; Sprachunterricht; Aufbaustudium; Graduiertenstudium; Hauptstudium
Abstract	This study of 134 college-level learners of German, enrolled in four years of instruction, showed them to "essentialize" German grammar when asked to describe it to a hypothetical friend. Kubota defined the term essentialization to capture learners' views of the target culture. Its main characteristic is the presupposition of "essential, stable, and objective traits" that distinguish one culture from the other. Indeed, analysis indicated that students construct essential differences between the grammars of German and English, thus reducing especially German to features that appear important to the learners but do not do justice to the functional realities of German as a living, organic language. Moreover, many students' descriptions of German grammar marked a strong affective response. The paper concludes with a discussion of these results in terms of (a) students' inability to perceive German as "real"; (b) students' and novice teachers' disorientation vis-a-vis systemic and socio-culturally connoted views of German; (c) a call for not just curricular but also "mind" reform; (d) appropriate objectives for language learning, such as those discussed by Byrnes, Kramsch, Kramsch and Whiteside, Maxim, and Schulz; and (e) the need for graduate programs to make the most of their role as training grounds for future teachers of language and culture. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10