German Archive

Thanks to generous support from the BLC, I was able to attend the weeklong International Convention of Teachers of German (ITD, Internationale Tagung der Deutschlehrer und Deutschlehrerinnen), which took place in summer 2013 in Bolzano, the capital of Italy’s autonomous province of South Tyrol, where a special statute protects the rights of a German-speaking minority.…

Language Development in an Urban Migrant Community: The Turkish/German/English of Children and Adolescents in Berlin by Professor Carol Pfaff, Department of Linguistics, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin Photos from the event: Abstract: In the course of my 30+ years in Berlin, I have conducted several empirical studies of the…

From early in their learning experience, foreign language (FL) learners at American universities explore socio-cultural connotations that, it is argued, are signified by FL words. Textbook authors and teachers follow an implicit canon of difference, a list of iconic words that over time—and without the benefit of empirical evidence—have come to represent essential differences in outlook between their native and the FL culture (Kubota, 2004). Despite the fast progression of the theory of teaching culture in FL learning (Kramsch, 2015; Risager, 2015), large empirical gaps remain. To date, there is little evidence that native speakers (NSs) of the FL perceive their cultural practices, including the cultural contexts in which language is used, homogenously enough to warrant their status as cultural traits. Using the example of expressions of affection, this exploratory study drew on qualitative and quantitative questionnaire data to investigate whether German NSs’ (N=52) accounts of their own and of most fellow Germans’ language behavior converged enough to derive a comprehensive and reliable cultural norm. Results indicated a lack of consensus among German NSs’ self-reported views, eluding the assumption of a pertinent community-specific norm. Implications for FL teaching and learning, as well as directions for future research, are discussed.

This contribution questions to whom and to whose learning experience has the idiom of crisis that so pervades the domain of U.S. foreign language teaching been addressed. The authors report on an advanced foreign language classroom-based study from 2013, in which undergraduate German learners translated a 14-page prose poem about translingual experience—“Das Klangtal” (“The Sound Valley”) by British-Austrian poet and translator Peter Waterhouse (2003). The course—located at a university in the American Southwest—created an opportunity for the students and the instructor to reflect on a constellation of relations—transdisciplinarity, translingualism, and transcontextuality—often perceived under the aegis of a “crisis” of the subject. Through an analysis of the students’ reflections as translators, readers, and languagers, the study considers ...

We live in a time of unmatched global mobility and correspondingly, the number of U.S.-American students studying abroad continues to increase. For years now, applied linguists have displayed an increased interest in study abroad students’ perspectives and desires about second language (L2) learning and use while abroad. Yet few studies have analyzed how these students’ beliefs and desires are shaped by the broader discourses regarding monolingualism and diversity that surround them. This paper thus investigates the experiences of two U.S.-American students during their year abroad in Marburg Germany, considering ...

This article addresses the teaching of complex representations of history through the study of literary texts in the college-level intermediate German class, employing the categories and tenets of Scollon and Scollon’s (2004) nexus analysis (see also Scollon, 2001). Nexus analysis is a model for understanding the meeting point of social actions and multiple discourses, each ...

Foreign language teachers are often migrants. They have traveled and lived in other countries either to learn or to teach a language. In 2005, Domna Stanton characterized language teaching as a cosmopolitan act-- “a complex encounter made in a sympathetic effort to see the world as [others] see it and, as a consequence, to denaturalize our own views” (629). Do foreign language teachers ...

Bringing conceptual blending into foreign language classroom discussions of cultural narratives can lead to critical language awareness and a deeper and broader understanding of cultural narratives, which the MLA promotes in its (2007) conceptualization of transcultural and translingual awareness. Using ...