27.1133, Review: Applied Ling; Lang Acq; Morphology; Syntax: Ziegler, Köpcke (2015)

[The LINGUIST List via LINGUIST]

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-1133. Thu Mar 03 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.1133, Review: Applied Ling; Lang Acq; Morphology; Syntax: Ziegler, Köpcke (2015)

Moderators: linguist at linguistlist.org (Damir Cavar, Malgorzata E. Cavar)
Reviews: reviews at linguistlist.org (Anthony Aristar, Helen Aristar-Dry, Sara Couture)
Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

*****************    LINGUIST List Support    *****************
                   25 years of LINGUIST List!
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
           http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

Editor for this issue: Sara  Couture <sara at linguistlist.org>
================================================================


Date: Thu, 03 Mar 2016 14:40:37
From: Daniel Walter [dwalter at andrew.cmu.edu]
Subject: Deutsche Grammatik in Kontakt [German Grammar in Contact]

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36092477


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-2659.html

EDITOR: Klaus-Michael  Köpcke
EDITOR: Arne  Ziegler
TITLE: Deutsche Grammatik in Kontakt [German Grammar in Contact]
SUBTITLE: Deutsch als Zweitsprache in Schule und Unterricht [German as a Second Language in Schools and Instruction]
SERIES TITLE: De Gruyter Linguistik – Impulse & Tendenzen 64
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Daniel Walter, Carnegie Mellon University

Reviews Editor: Robert Arthur Cote

SUMMARY

“Deutsche Grammatik in Kontakt: Deutsch als Zweitsprache in Schule und
Unterricht” (“German Grammar in Contact: German as a second language in school
and in the classroom”) by Klaus-Michael Köpcke and Arne Ziegler presents a
diverse collection of articles that reflect the multiple perspectives of
researchers in the field of German as a second language (DaZ). This edited
volume is structured by five parts: a foreword, an introduction to language
development and elaboration in general, and three main divisions:
Grammatisches Wissen (grammatical knowledge), Fehler versus Abweichung
(mistakes versus variation), and Empirische Untersuchungen (empirical
studies). Each division contains contributions from various authors in the
field of DaZ. All are working from different theoretical backgrounds and with
different pedagogical goals but at the same time allow a shared problem to be
viewed through each article’s particular lens.

In the foreword, the editors discuss the origin of this collection of works.
The chapters within this book are the result of an international symposium on
German grammar, “Grammatik in der Universität und für die Schule” (“Grammar in
the University and for the School), which has now been held four times at
multiple universities in Germany. From these symposia, presenters were
selected to produce chapters for this edited volume. The authors then discuss
the justification for this publication, stating that DaZ has become an
everyday part of schooling in Germany, rather than a special interest area
which can be separated from the classroom experiences of teachers and
students. In the final section of the foreword, the editors outline the
volume’s structure and provide brief summaries of each chapter.

The introduction by Utz Maas, “Sprachausbau in der Zweitssprache” (“Language
elaboration in the second language”), frames the rest of the book by outlining
what is meant by second language elaboration, more commonly known as growth
and development to US researchers, . This chapter is divided into nine
sections. The first section positions language elaboration within a concrete
problem, namely a specific immigrant population from Morocco now living in
Germany. The author contrasts two different learning environments. On one
hand, there are the language behaviors of these immigrant children, and on the
other hand the linguistic environment of their previous country. In the second
section, Mass outlines the base terminology of register differentiation, which
include formal (institutionally regulated written language), informal or
public (market, workplace), and intimate (family, close friends). The third
section describes language acquisition as elaboration, where child acquisition
normally flows from the intimate, to the informal, and to finally to the
formal via introduction of written language, which is primarily based in the
formal register. The fourth section contrasts this register difference with
the situation in Morocco, where different languages are separated by register.
In Morocco, the intimate register is occupied by the use of Berber,
while/whereas the informal register is Moroccan Arabic. Within institutions
however, written documents in the formal register are in French and standard
Arabic. sections five, six, and seven delve deeper into the consequences of
these different language and register pairings, as well as the oral versus
literate uses of each language and their effects on language use.  section
eight discusses possible transfer options available to this population of
migrant children between their language uses in Morocco and the register
breakdown in their new environment in Germany. The final section summarizes
the point that language acquisition is not simply a cumulative process, and
that this kind of view restricts  the importance of students’ linguistic
backgrounds.

The second chapter by Mathilde Hennig, “Grammatisches Wissen und literale
Kompetenz” (“Grammatical knowledge and literary competence”) begins the first
section on grammatical knowledge. This chapter is divided into two main parts.
sections one through four detail the problems and controversies of teaching
grammar in second language classrooms, with a particular emphasis on the
relationship between “competence in advanced written communication” and
grammar knowledge (metalinguistic knowledge including terminology). The second
main part is an empirical study, which investigates two groups of learners who
are given sentences with complex grammatical errors. One group is given a list
of terminology in the instructions, but the other is not. The comparison of
the two groups shows that the addition of terminology aided students’ ability
to understand and resolve grammatical errors. section six concludes the
chapter with a call for more formal instruction of grammar in the language
classroom.

The third chapter by Jakob Ossner, “Grammatik im Studium” (“Grammar in the
course of study”), presents the challenges of teaching linguistics in teacher
education programs. In the first section, the author presents two major
questions he answers later in this chapter: why is linguistics the elementary
tool for future German teachers, and what should a course of study look like
that has this goal in mind? The second section describes linguistics as an
elementary tool which has four major functions: syntactic (the constitution of
a sentence as an expression of a thought), pragmatic, (the constitution of an
utterance as an intentional action), (hermeneutic) the constitution of a text
, and meta- and extra-communicative (the constitution of language
development). Section three outlines the differences between knowledge and
competence, which includes what students can do with language versus what they
know about the language. The fourth section presents the scope of grammatical
knowledge and its functional purpose in the classroom. The fifth section
provides a specific challenge that can be solved with the tool of linguistic
knowledge: what is a word? The author dives into the differences between
lexical, syntactic and phonological knowledge, as well as prosody, as all
parts of understanding a word. Section six outlines another problem: gapping
and coordination. Section seven summarizes  the chapter . The final section,
grammatical knowledge as problem solving knowledge, discusses how grammatical
knowledge can be used by both teachers and students to solve problems and
investigate texts at a deeper level.

The fourth chapter by Wilhelm Grieβhaber, “Grammatische Terminologie und
mehrsprachige Schülerinnen und Schüler” (“Grammatical terminology and
multilingual school children”), problematizes the use of terminology in
language education. The introductory section examines  the role that
grammatical terminology plays with multilingual school children. Sections two
and three juxtapose the traditional terminology used in German and how
children with Turkish as a first language will not be able to transfer those
conceptualizations of grammar because of the different structure between the
two languages. section four provides a specific example of how differences in
uses of plural forms and the concept of countability do not lead to successful
understand for L1 Turkish learners of German. section five builds on the idea
that grammatical terms do not provide students with any useful knowledge.
Finally, section six proposes that teacher training programs should focus more
on the analysis of linguistic utterances and remove the practice of using
terminology to teach linguistic concepts.

The fifth chapter by Sabina De Carlo and Jana Gamper, “Die Ermittlung
grammatischer Kompetenzen anhand der Profilanalyse” (“The investigation of
grammatical competences by means of profile analysis”), compares two tests,
the C-Test (see Baur et al., 2006) and the Profile Analysis of Written Texts
(Griesshaber, 2005) which are supposed to determine language competency.
Through two studies, the authors investigate whether W. Grieβhaber’s ‘profile
analysis’ method is as appropriate to estimate students’ competences as the
c-test. The profile analysis method looks for the position of the verb in
students’ texts to see which syntactic structures appear, while the c-test is
a normed, quantitative testing method that uses 60 – 80 texts to test
students’ knowledge with a cloze task design. The authors present results that
show that the two methods do not represent students’ competencies in the same
ways.

The sixth, and final chapter of the grammatical gender section by Christian
Braun, “Schwierigkeiten und Probleme bei der grammatischen Textanalyse”
(“Difficulties and problems with grammatical text analysis.”), points out what
difficulties both students and teachers encounter with grammar. The author
argues that the two mains problems are struggles with grammatical terminology
and a lack of experience in doing syntactic analysis. sections one and two
introduce the topic and the environment from which the data for this chapter
was collected, which were summer sessions of a grammar course. section three
presents selected case examples from these students. The conclusion outlines
competences that need to be further developed in students, including
reflective practices with relevant, syntactic units, conscious practices with
hindsight syntactic form/meaning connections, competency with explicit
differences between syntactic functions and prototypical, formal realizations
of terminology, complete knowledge of terms needed for sentence analysis, and
competent usage of methods for identification and qualification.

In the seventh chapter, “Abweichungen sind keine Fehler” (“Variations are not
mistakes”), Melanie Lenzhofer-Glantschnig and Elisabeth Scherr,  examine
mistakes versus variation. They discuss non-German speaking students living in
Austria who are exposed to a standardized dialect atr school but then
encounter many varieties of German in their day to day lives through
interactions with German speakers. After the introduction, a corpus of written
learner data which shows intra- and intervariability in language use is
presented. Section three discusses the influences of dialectical and
regiolectical variability, and section four discusses the influence of
standard usage differences such as verb placement and the avoidance of
genitive forms. The final section calls on researchers and teachers to
understand the environments in which learners encounter authentic language,
which is full of variety and drives the acquisition process in ways that
deviate from a homogenous, standard language based program.

The eighth chapter by Arne Ziegler and Anna Thurner entitled “Syntaktische
Fehlerquellen im DaZ-Unterricht” (“Syntactic sources of error in the
DaZ-classroom”) ends the section on the difference between variability and
mistakes.  It begins by stating the fact that there is no singular thing as
DaZ but rather behaviors that take place within particular physical and social
spaces that are unique.   Next, it builds on this idea by focusing on L1
Italian learners of German in southern Tirol and their language environment.
Section three then outlines the problems with only looking at mistakes as
correct versus incorrect and posits the idea that mistakes provide a lens
through which one can see language development. As an example of this type of
analysis, section four investigates learner “errors” via a learner corpus of
written texts. The author analyzes four structures that appear in learner
texts (particle verb construction and lexical brackets, subordinate clause
brackets, serialization in multi-part verb complex, and multiple fore-field
placement in verb-second position sentences) and discusses how L1 transfer and
the students’ linguistic environment cause these “errors”. The author
concludes the chapter with a call for language instruction and research that
takes into account students’ backgrounds.

The ninth chapter by Christine Czinglar, Katharina Korecky-Kröll, Kumru
Uzunkaya-Sharma, and Wolfgang U. Dressler, “Wie beeinflusst der
sozioökonomische Status den Erwerb der Erst- und Zweitsprache?” (“How does
socio-economic status influence first and second language acquisition”) begins
the final section containing empirical studies. The first subsection presents
the current research on socio-economic stats (SES) and language development,
pointing to a need for more studies that look at SES and bilingual
development.  Subsection two describes the process by which the 31 monolingual
German and 30 bilingual German-Turkish participants were placed into either
High or Low SES groups. The following section begins the analysis of the data.
First, the authors compare the effect of SES on vocabulary knowledge in each
participant’s first language. The monolingual German group showed a bigger
divide between High and Low SES groups, while the L1 Turkish L2 German group
showed relatively little difference in L1 vocabulary knowledge by SES group.
Then the results of the L2 German vocabulary for the L1 Turkish speakers were
analyzed. Here, there was also no statistical difference between groups. The
authors then analyze spontaneous language used by the L1 Turkish L2 German
children to investigate the rate at which noun-phrases and determiner-phrases
are acquired by SES group. This analysis showed that High SES children had a
better command and wider array of NP and DP structures than the children in
the Low SES group. The authors summarize the results in the final section and
emphasize two main points. First, that SES had no effect for this particular
group of bilinguals, and second, that looking at other linguistic elements,
such as morphology, provides a deep understanding than a straightforward
comparison of passive vocabulary knowledge.

The tenth chapter by Christin Schellhardt and Christoph Schroeder,
“Nominalphrasen in deutschen und türkischen Texten mehrsprachiger
SchülerInnen” (“Nominal phrases in German and Turkish texts of multilingual
school children”), focuses on noun phrase complexity as a measure of
linguistic development. In the first two sections of this chapter, the authors
recall the idea of register described by Maas in the foreword. Here they focus
on the expansion of noun phrases through attributes as a sign of growth in the
written register. Section three describes the data used for this study, which
is comprised of a subcorpus of the DFG-funded Projekt MULTILIT encompassing
texts in Turkish and German written by Turkish German bilingual students at
different school ages. section four describes the different structure of NPs
in German, an inflectional language, and Turkish, an agglutinative one. This
chapter also outlines four groups of NPs for study: simple NPs without
attributes, NPs with non-propositional attributes, NPs with propositional
attributes, and NPs that have more than one attributive extension of different
types. Section five presents the results, which are complex in that there is
no clear linear trajectory between age and NP complexity. In the final
section, the author discuss possible reasons for this, including the
purposeful dismissal of particular registers in youth culture. 

The eleventh chapter by Anja Binanzer, “Von Sexus zu Genus?” (“From sex to
gender?”), discusses the acquisition of gender by primary school students with
L1 Turkish and L1 Russian. In the first section, the author articulates the
differences in gender between Russian, a language with gender, and Turkish, a
language without gender. section two includes information on gender marking in
German as the target language for these children. section three asks the
question, how do children with these different L1s acquire gender and what
effect does transfer play. In the fourth section, the author describes the
participants and the testing methods. The test design is a cloze task where
students must fill in the missing determiner and also select what pronoun
would replace the subject. The items are differentiated by gender, but also by
animacy and sex. The results presented in section five show consistency in
gender assignment, even if it is not target-like. The authors discuss in
section six that the children then must have a systematic way of assigning
gender, although it may be different from the one used in German, where
animacy plays a particularly important role. In the conclusion, the author
makes the claim that both groups used the same semantic strategy for animate
objects, and they also showed grammatical strategies for inanimate objects.
The author also argues that the non-target-like gender assignment to inanimate
objects lead to the conclusion that gender is only realized as a grammatical
category when children begin to apply it to inanimate objects.

The twelfth chapter, by Klaus-Michael Köpcke and Verena Wecker, “Deutsche
Pluralmorphologie im DaZ-Erwerb” (“German plural morphology in the acquisition
of German as a second language”), presents data from L1 Russian and L1 Turkish
child learners of German. The study aims at understanding the acquisition
process of German plural morphology by these L2 German learners. In the first
section, the authors hint at the difficulties in learning German plural
morphology. For example, is it die Onkel or die Onkels? The authors take the
identification of errors in the L2 classroom to task in the second section and
point out that these errors are not something that needs to be immediately
corrected and then moved past, but rather used as a “diagnostic window” into
language development. In section three, the authors outline the nine different
types of plural marking in German. In section four, the authors outline their
empirical study. The results of the study show that while these children are
making errors, they are making systematic ones which are reflective of both
the structure and frequency of plural formation in German. They also discuss
how some plural endings are better or worse examples of how plural nouns look.
In the final remarks, the authors reflect on the systematic nature of these
students’ variable plural markings and how the identification of these
mistakes can be used as a tool on their journey of language acquisition.

In the thirteenth and final chapter by Yüksel Eikinci, “Grammatik- und
Wortschatzvermittlung in sprachlich heterogenen Lernergruppen” (“Grammar and
vocabulary mediation in linguistically heterogeneous learner groups”), the
author argues that a student’s cultural background needs to be considered to
inform teaching practices. In the introduction, the author presents the
challenges that faces many school children from immigrant families, including
linguistic, social, and cultural difficulties. The second section contains
foundations for grammar and vocabulary instruction as well as stumbling blocks
one can anticipate, such as inflection and words with more than one meaning.
In section three, the author puts forth the idea of the language detective,
where students are encouraged to examine all of their languages to gain a
better understanding of the differences between them. Section four contains a
transcription of one such language comparison. In addition to linguistic
comparisons, the author also describes the need for the use of culturally
familiar artifacts. Section five describes the use of Nasreddin Hodscha, a
well-known middle-eastern folk hero, with texts in both Turkish and German.
The author concludes with recommendations for systematic and culturally
relevant instruction for DaZ learners. 

EVALUATION

With the current immigration crisis and the surge of migrants into Germany
(Horn, 2012), this book is a timely addition to the literature on German as a
second language (DaZ). With a number of the articles directly related to
understanding what immigrant populations bring with them to the table when
they start their DaZ journey, this collection helps to frame the instruction
of DaZ with regard to sociolinguistic and pedagogical considerations. 

For those interested in current trends in teaching German as a second language
as well as those who research this topic, this collection contains a wide
array of current articles. The range and depth of topics discussed in this
book are a mirror into the complexities of foreign language instruction. As
such, this collection provides specific insights into the numerous areas of
study involved in DaZ, from the widest scope of educational systems as a whole
to the classroom level and individual language processing.

Of particular relevance to an American audience should be the clear
connections to ESL instruction in the US. Many of the articles in this book
speak to issues faced in the United States regarding the education of
immigrant children and their inclusion and participation as full members of
the education system (for example, see Cohen & Wickens, 2015). Some important
highlights from this book that are very applicable are the need to incorporate
culturally relevant materials for ESL learners and present grammar in an
accessible, meaningful way.

My main critique of this work is that it is very compartmentalized. In one
regard, this is helpful because one does not need to read any of the other
chapters to appreciate the content of one particular chapter, but as a
collection, there seems to be a bit of a missing thread from one work to the
next.

Overall this work does an excellent job of encompassing many differing
perspectives on DaZ, and even ones that come to quite contradictory
conclusions of one another. While many of the articles focus on child learners
of German from Arabic speaking countries, this collection still contains a
diverse mix of target populations in terms of age, gender, socioeconomic
status, and first language. In sum, this edited volume provides much needed
insight in a time where DaZ (and ESL) are vastly expanding.

Potential users of this work will need a strong, functional knowledge of
academic written German, prior knowledge of issues in second language
acquisition and German as a second language, and some knowledge of
experimental design and statistical analysis. This book is aimed at
professionals already working or graduates preparing for a career focused on
research in the field of German as a second/foreign language.

REFERENCES

Baur, R., Spettmann, M., & Grotjahn, R. (2006). Der C-Test als Instrument der
Sprachstandserhebung und Sprachfoerderung im Bereich Duetsch als Zweitsprache.
In: Hans-Joachim Roth, Hans H. Reich & Drorit Lengyel (Eds.): Von der
Sprachdiagnose zur Sprachförderung, 115-127.

Cohen, J., & Wickens, C. M. (2015). Speaking English and the Loss of Heritage
Language. TESL-EJ, 18(4).

Griesshaber, W. (2005). Sprachstandsdiagnose im kindlichen Zweitspracherwerb:
Funktionalpragmatische Fundierung der Profilanalyse. AZM-NW Series B, Hamburgh
Uni: SFB 538.

Horn, Heather. (2015). The staggering scale of Germany’s refugee project. The
Atlantic. Retrieved from
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/germany-merkel-refuge
e-asylum/405058/


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

After receiving his PhD in SLA from Carnegie Mellon University, Dr. Walter is
currently an adjunct Professor of German at Morehouse College and Atlanta
Technical College, in addition to being the Coordinator for the German
American Cultural Foundation. His research interests include German as a
Second/Foreign Language, Second Language Processing, Second Language
Acquisition of Morphosyntax, and Socio-cognitive Approaches to SLA.





------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*****************    LINGUIST List Support    *****************
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
            http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/
 


----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-27-1133	
----------------------------------------------------------