Raising awareness (foreign language teaching)

Raising awareness in foreign language lessons offers students understanding and structuring aids in the form of targeted tips that are intended to make the respective relationships transparent and thus understandable for the students in the event of error-prone, i.e. semantically or morphosyntactically complex grammatical rules that are difficult due to possible interferences with the mother tongue .

Grammar learning and grammar lessons

Foreign language lessons are widely perceived by students as grammar lessons and are accordingly rejected. The teachers must therefore try to break this prejudice through largely action-oriented teaching and enable the students to perceive and learn the essential grammatical regularities of the foreign language within this framework - supported by suitable help from the teacher. Following the principle of learning orientation , language learners must first and foremost do their linguistic structuring (= intuitive grasp or conscious recognition of linguistic regularities) themselves. For this they need as many encounters as possible with situationally integrated language (communication, texts) in class. However, as teaching experience shows, this alone is not sufficient for many students; they need additional understanding and structuring aids in the sense of the above definition (see structuring aids ).

Discovering learning in foreign language lessons

There are many opportunities for the pupils themselves to actively learn through discovery . Basically, the students should be encouraged to develop as much self-activity as possible and to try out their own learning paths. On the other hand, they must not be left alone with unsuccessful and thus frustrating attempts.

Grammar in the text

An important learning aid for students is to help them understand the function of grammatical forms in context. The path can lead from the discussion of the grammatical form to the illuminating context as well as from the text discussion to the grammatical form and from there back to the text.

Students' own attempts at structuring

Individual attempts at structuring should be encouraged above all when a linguistic comprehension problem is articulated from within the class:

The students are asked to endure the uncertainty until it can be clarified from the wider context.
Have the students clarify the problem. This effort alone helps many to get closer to the solution.
The students themselves or in the study group (based on the situation or the linguistic context) make plausible assumptions about the meaning of a grammatical construction in order to look for confirmation or correction of their assumption in the further course of the text or communication.
When looking for an explanation, the students look up the grammar section of the textbook or a student grammar and compare their own answer with that of their partner or other students in the table group.

Discovery learning in phases of free work

In addition to the current problem situation, such activities can also be undertaken in phases of free work . The students get more time to develop their own structures:

Via a so-called " concordance program " such as For example, (for English) Mini Concordancer (Longman) or MicroConcord or Wordsmith (Oxford University Press), the pupils use selected texts in these databases to search for places in which a certain structure occurs and try to find “typical” contexts of use and to recognize regularities.
The pupils draft an explanation and / or an exercise on a certain grammatical topic (if necessary also using an " author program " for the creation of learning materials), whereby they can also fall back on data from one of the databases mentioned above. This activity is “ action-oriented ” in the best sense of the word when the materials are created for a classmate who is absent due to illness.

Structuring aids

Insofar as the pupils cannot make linguistic classifications and structuring themselves, appropriate structuring aids can be offered to them step by step (“guided induction ”). Some possibilities:

Study conversations

When learning their mother tongue, the caregivers make it easier for the children to understand utterances, on the one hand by referring to situational circumstances, and on the other hand by using directly language-related aids such as short sentences, clear pronunciation, pronounced facial expressions and intonation, clear gestures, pauses, lexical or structural simplifications , direct repetitions or varying paraphrases, occasional queries to check the understanding, references to the context, explanations, etc. These aspects also play an important role for classroom “learning conversations”. Learning conversations thus represent the most natural and "gentle" form of awareness. However, teaching experience shows that this mostly only preconscious structuring of the pupils has to be supported and consolidated by specific aids (see the following sections).

Native language help

It is thanks to Wolfgang Butzkamm that "monolingualism" as a principle of foreign language teaching is no longer seen dogmatically, but that the mother tongue - with all the adherence to the generally foreign language class discussion - is also seen as an essential learning aid:

A short sprinkle of native speakers helps students to “keep the conversation going”: S: If the child… what does it mean, deserves to be beaten? - L: deserves it - S: If the child deserves it, he should get it.
“Silent rules”: In some cases an idiomatic translation helps to recognize what a certain grammatical form is about without the relevant grammatical regularities being able to be named; z. B .: Intensification through the ing form: She's been learning Latin for two hours. = "She has been learning Latin for two hours." Sometimes you can translate even more freely; z. B. to clarify the function of the present perfect to denote an action, the consequences of which are relevant in the present: Have you had lunch yet? = "Are you hungry?", It's going to rain. = “It looks like rain.”, I've been sent by the Labor Exchange. = “I'm from the employment office.” Or (from Michael Jackson's “Earth Song”) What have we done to the world / Look what we've done. = "Look how the world looks now."
“ Mother tongue reflection ”: The conscious reproduction of the foreign structure can also be a learning aid: Does your dog bite? = "Does your dog bite?"

When practicing a dialogue and auditioning a sentence that contains unknowns, the teacher can insert a suitable translation after the foreign-language original and then repeat the original. This allows the students to concentrate fully on repeating them without being distracted by the search for meaning. In bilingual teaching, this technique is called the " sandwich technique ".

Formal structuring

A class discussion can develop from the class discussion about the vacation visits to friends or relatives (see above), which leads to a blackboard picture as in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1: Direction of action and do expansion (1)

The direction of the first "action arrow", namely from left to right, corresponds to the most common form of imagining actions in time and space in our western cultures: time arrows are drawn from left to right, as are time sequences and movements almost always by hand movements left to right are supported. This is also part of the familiar world of experience for most of the students, and can therefore be used as the basis for the further course of the lesson. When asked with do , however, this habit is broken; that is, the link between the use of do and the “counter-rotation” of the corresponding action arrow is an important factor for the (indirect) effectiveness of this illustration on the safety in the use of the do extension. Likewise, the appeal to the mother tongue competence of the pupils through the inclusion of the German question words who or whom plays a role because they are intuitively familiar with their meaning - without recourse to the problematic terms "subject" or "object" (cf. above: native language help ).

Fig. 2: Direction of action and do expansion (2)

This presentation can be continued on overhead transparencies in a way that very clearly connects the actors and those affected, the “direction” of the action and the corresponding linguistic forms in several steps (see Fig. 2).

Action-oriented forms of consolidating grammatical knowledge

Grammatical knowledge can be consolidated through many forms of action-oriented individual, partner or group work, which support learning processes in the sense of holistic learning by enjoying one's own actions (cf. also " learning through teaching "):

Using a short text in a foreign language, a joke or a spontaneous saying, a student explains a grammatical problem to the table group or the whole class.
For an absent classmate, the students design a worksheet with graphics, explanations and examples (also as part of their own " portfolio ", a documentation of ongoing or completed student activities).
Students create a poster with graphics, explanations and examples to hang up temporarily in class; such illustrations by the student can be more effective than externally imparted rules.
You create a worksheet with a systematic exercise, let the class work on it and then discuss the tasks.
You write a “cheat sheet” that is limited to the most important points for the individual student.
You will find simple memos, "donkey bridges" or other mnemonic aids such as B. (directed against mistakes like Who did Mehmet visit ed ) “When Didi comes, Ede goes away” or “ If with will and would is only good for wanting”.
You systematize memos (short texts with clear contextual references, systematizations, memorabilia, donkey bridges, mind maps , etc.) in a grammar index.
You write a rap song or other lyrics (on a melody of your choice) to practice a certain grammatical problem and present the result to the class.

Of course, such activities do not necessarily come at the end of a grammar-centered teaching phase; Rather, it makes sense to insert them again and again selectively between phases of more or less systematic practice, but also between phases of action-oriented language use, so that the specific effects of the various activities can reinforce each other.

Systematic exercises

About the function of exercises

Through more or less clear repetition effects, exercises help the learners to practice the use of certain grammatical forms, ie to consolidate them through distributed and varied repetition. However, some empirical studies indicate that only form or structure-related exercises do not have the effects on linguistic competence that are traditionally assigned to them. It must therefore be ensured that exercises are always determined in terms of content and function and that the students' attention is repeatedly drawn to the function (meaning) of the respective grammatical form. Depending on the frequency of occurrence of the grammatical form to be practiced, a distinction is made in the following between “systematic-functional” and “functional” exercises (although this distinction does not always have to be made).

Systematic-functional exercises

In systematic-functional exercises, the specific grammatical function occurs particularly frequently; She is involved in clearly structured mini-situations that the students have to understand and implement in language. In the following example, the function of the English present perfect in the utterances of B emerges from the mini-situations that are built up by the utterances of A. They make it clear that the present perfect always makes a statement about a current state:

A: Would you like something to eat? - B: No, thanks. I ...................... lunch. (Suggestion: I've just had lunch.)
A: Do you know where Julia is? - B: Yes, I ......................... her. (Suggestion: I've just seen / met her [in the library].)
A: How is Amy these days? - B: I don't know. I ......................... her recently. (Suggestion: I haven't seen her recently.)
A: Is Brussels an interesting place? - B: I've no idea. ...................... there. (Suggestion: I've never been there.)

Functional exercises

Examples of functional practice are grammar-oriented games, role-playing games in the course of which certain grammatical functions are particularly relevant, as well as discussion of an authentic text , for example a song, which contains motivated accumulations of a certain grammatical form (e.g. the many forms of used to (do) and would (do) in Bruce Springsteen's “The River” as well as in the intro to it, which make life appear as an endless series of repetitive experiences). Songs have the advantage that they - in addition to the conversation - invite you to listen, hum and sing along, which leads to additional practice effects. It is precisely the fact that in such activities, with all the systematic in the above-mentioned sense, content and thus personal commitment, not grammatical problem points in the foreground, makes the special character of functional exercises.

Help for “unlearning” mistakes

The type and frequency of error corrections should be based on whether it is a communicative-acting phase or a systematic practice phase. Corrections within communicative-acting phases should strictly follow the principle of message before accuracy , with the following strategies:

Allow time to formulate and to correct yourself immediately
Make a repair offer (opportunity to correct yourself)
Ask classmates to suggest a correction
Give repair help (help with self-correction): e.g. E.g .: S: I have gone to England last year. - L: Oh, you went to England. Where exactly did you go? - S: I went to London. - L: What sights did you visit there? etc.
Correction discussion after the communicative phase (the teacher notes the mistakes without comment and only discusses them after the communicative phase has been completed).

Promotion of language awareness

Constructive learning processes can also be supported by promoting the foreign language awareness of the pupils. In the present context, two cognitive aspects are particularly important that can be expanded in class:

the awareness of grammatical peculiarities of the foreign language compared to the mother tongue and
the awareness that the learners themselves have of their learning processes, in particular also of the native-speaking and cultural-specific nature of mistakes in the learning process.

swell

↑ For a detailed presentation of the following considerations as well as many specific examples for English lessons cf. Johannes-Peter Timm : Learning grammar .... In: Timm, 1998, 299-318.

↑ Cf. Günther Zimmermann: “Attitudes to grammar and grammar lessons.” In: Gnutzmann & Königs, 1995, 181–200.

↑ Rudolf Nissen: "learning conversations". In: Timm, 1998, 158-167.

^ Butzkamm, 2002, 24.

^ Butzkamm, 2002, 233.

^ Butzkamm, 2002, 238.

↑ "Sandwich technology", described by Diesterweg ( page can no longer be called up , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Langenscheidt ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 975 kB), Duden (PDF; 2.3 MB)@1@ 2 @1@ 2

^ Drawings by Christiane Metzger. - For the teaching embedding of this sequence of images cf. Timm, 1998, 312-313.

↑ Claudia Finkbeiner: "Possibilities of grammatical cognitivation". Foreign language teaching English , 30 (4), 1996, 55.

↑ after R. Murphy: English grammar in use (2nd ed.). Cambridge: CUP, 1994.

Jump up ↑ Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Live 1975-85 , Columbia 460227.

↑ Cf. Claus Gnutzmann & Marion Kiffe: "Language Awareness and Consciousness at Secondary Level II". In: Timm, 1998, 319-327.

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