Traditions and Transitions: Curricula for German Studies

Traditions and Transitions: Curricula for German Studies is a collection of essays by Canadian and international scholars on the topic of why and how the curriculum for post-secondary German studies should evolve. Its twenty chapters, written by international experts in the field of German as a foreign or second language, explore new perspectives on and orientations in the curriculum.

In light of shifts in the linguistic and intercultural needs of today’s global citizens, these scholars in German studies question the foundations and motivations of common curriculum goals, traditional program content, standard syllabus design, and long-standing classroom practice. Several chapters draw on a range of contemporary theories—from critical applied linguistics, second-language acquisition, curriculum theory, and cultural studies—to propose and encourage new curriculum thinking and reflective practice related to the translingual and cross-cultural subjectivities of speakers, learners, and teachers of German. Other chapters describe and analyze specific examples of emerging trends in curriculum practice for learners as users of German.

This volume will be invaluable to university and college faculty working in the discipline of German studies as well as in other modern languages and second-language education in general. Its combination of theoretical and descriptive explorations will help readers develop a critical awareness and understanding of curriculum for teaching German and to implement new approaches in the interests of their students.

1

Claire Kramsch (University of California, Berkeley)

Claire Kramsch (University of California, Berkeley) theorizes and illustrates the imaginative dimension of translingual and transcultural competence necessary for curriculum thinking and design for foreign language teaching. She focuses on the imagination in teaching languages as a cognitive and social process in the construction of meaning, essential to the goal of mutual understanding.

2

Alice Pitt (York University)

Alice Pitt (York University) draws on personal narratives and psychoanalytical theory to reflect on the emotional dimensions of the language learning experience. Her account reveals how the language learner does unpredictable, passionate things with the target language that go against the pedagogy and curriculum of linguistic mastery and fixed representations of culture.
3

John L. Plews (Saint Mary’s University)

John L. Plews (Saint Mary’s University) uses postcolonial theories first to analyze Canadian Germanistik as system of social organization that supports certain relations of power. He then proposes rethinking the subject positions of professors and students of German through postcolonialism in order to intervene in institutional and pedagogical structures.
4

Barbara Schmenk (University of Waterloo)

Barbara Schmenk (University of Waterloo) analyzes the transition from a North American to a European textbook for teaching beginners’ German at a Canadian university. She thus critically accounts for the decisions, implications, and challenges involved in implementing a curricular shift from guidelines set by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.
5

Dietmar Rössler (Justus-Liebig Universität Gießen)

Dietmar Rössler (Justus-Liebig Universität Gießen) questions the theoretical and practical innovation and consistency of the so-called communicative turn in the foreign language curriculum planning and teaching of the last thirty years. Using German-as-a-foreign/second-language textbooks, he identifies the pitfalls of communicative language teaching in regard to form, content, and educational development.
6

Mareike Müller (University of Waterloo)

Mareike Müller (University of Waterloo) examines pronunciation training as a realm in German-as-a-foreign/second-language curricula where the model of the “native speaker” has persisted. In light of the “intelligibility principle” and analyses of student beliefs about pronunciation learning, she proposes the “intercultural speaker” as an alternative basis in which to reframe pronunciation teaching.
7

Grit Liebscher (University of Waterloo)

Grit Liebscher (University of Waterloo) discusses the roles of students’ first and second languages rectly. rs to mention only their changes to the original. spade a spade and not a in the enactment of the language acquisition curriculum in the classroom. Drawing on research on multilinguals’ language use and data from the language classroom, she proposes a framework for curriculum research that embraces learners’ awareness of their bilingual or multilingual identities.
8

Susanne Even (Indiana University) and David Dollenmayer (Worcester Polytechnic Institute)

Susanne Even (Indiana University) and David Dollenmayer (Worcester Polytechnic Institute) argue for the use of bilingual texts in the transitional third semester of a language program in order to develop students’ second language literacy in a way that attends especially to language awareness and cultural knowledge. Their analysis of using bilingual texts includes an explanation of Voll easy, their own bilingual novel invented for the classroom.
9

Chantelle Warner and David Gramling (University of Arizona)

Chantelle Warner and David Gramling (University of Arizona) explore the pedagogical-analytical stance of “Contact Pragmatics” as a collaborative approach for teachers and students to go beyond standard historical contextualization for competent literary interpretation in advanced language classes. They propose analyzing the institutional pragmatic position of second language readers in regard to the foreign language texts they read, that is, the rule-governed affective-experiential space of interpreting (and misreading).
10

Allison Cattell (University of Waterloo)

Allison Cattell (University of Waterloo) draws on the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein as well as phenomenology to explore the transition from methods-era curricula to postmethod approaches to foreign/second language and culture teaching. Wittgenstein’s concepts are used to help overcome educational practice as a skill or institutional service separate from practitioners and realize the truly reflective teaching essential to postmethod practices.

11

Morgan Koerner (College of Charleston)

Morgan Koerner (College of Charleston) proposes using Roland Barthes’ theory of the “writerly” text as a basis for curriculum design and implementation for German language and literature. He takes issue with formal approaches to literary study and illustrates how to enact a curriculum for reading and writing German through parody that is more participatory, more open-ended, and more creative.

12

Kim Fordham (University of Alberta)

Kim Fordham (University of Alberta) describes the curricular motivation for reading a complete novel as well as using specifically drama pedagogy in the context of an intensive, short-stay, German immersion program. While including literature coheres with traditional domestic curricula, immersion and drama pedagogy diverge considerably from their formalist or even critical approaches, enabling different kinds of intercultural knowledge and self-knowledge.
13

Marianna Ryshina-Pankova (Georgetown University)

Marianna Ryshina-Pankova (Georgetown University) draws on a functional view of language and language learning to theorize a genre-based curricular progression for the development of advanced German-as-a-foreign-language literacy abilities. Such an approach realizes the integration of language and culture in extended instructional sequences. She illustrates the progression by analyzing texts on the fall of the Berlin Wall.
14

Cheryl Dueck and Stephan Jaeger (University of Manitoba)

Cheryl Dueck and Stephan Jaeger (University of Manitoba) document curriculum development in a midsize German program that follows the trend from the traditional Germanistik to a cultural studies orientation of German Studies that includes literature in translation and emphasizes intercultural learning. Qualitative assessments reveal the importance of the subjective, biographical relationship of students to content as indicative of motivation and curriculum success.
15

Gillian Martin, Helen Jane O’Sullivan, and Breffni O’Rourke (Trinity College Dublin)

Gillian Martin, Helen Jane O’Sullivan, and Breffni O’Rourke (Trinity College Dublin) review a blended learning project between Irish students of German and German students of English designed to promote pragmatic awareness and intercultural competence. Using an activity theory approach, they consider the potential added communicative complexity, whether virtual contact enhances intercultural learning, and factors impacting course success.
16

Mathias Schulze (University of Waterloo)

Mathias Schulze (University of Waterloo) reviews the mutual relationship between the academic fields of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) and German Studies. He argues that, while CALL has long influenced teaching and learning German, its importance is still much overlooked. He then addresses continuing challenges and further curricular contributions of computers to German Studies.
17
 
Glenn Levine (University of California, Irvine)

Glenn Levine (University of California, Irvine) critically examines the theoretical issues and practical dilemmas of integrating digitally mediated communication into foreign language teaching. Seeking to reform curriculum for German, he identifies a disconnect between traditional pedagogical uses of technology as augmentation and the digital participatory culture of today’s youth who see it as an integral vehicle for learning.
18

Deidre Byrnes (National University of Ireland, Galway)

Deidre Byrnes (National University of Ireland, Galway) describes the curricular goals, content, design, delivery, and assessment of a Legal German course. Given the significance of the economic and employability in academic choices, as well as the drive in language teaching toward holistic approaches, the course focused on using language in a specific professional setting while fostering transferable skills.
19

Elizabeth A. Andersen and Ruth O’Rourke (Newcastle University)

Elizabeth A. Andersen and Ruth O’Rourke (Newcastle University) recount the development of an extracurricular student ambassadors initiative to promote university modern languages programs in schools as well as its subsequent integration into the postsecondary curriculum. They analyze the success of the initiative for current and future students in terms of motivational effectiveness and employability.
20

James M. Skidmore (University of Waterloo)

James M. Skidmore (University of Waterloo) humorously and acutely questions the disciplinary singularity of North American Germanistik or German Studies by tracing the mythologies of crisis and threat in almost a century of professional literature. He proposes greater integration of German Studies programming across the university curriculum.