Exploring structures and beliefs underlying textbook praxis in German foreign language courses at a South African university – a social realist perspective
- Authors: Engelbrecht, Natasha
- Date: 2022-04-07
- Subjects: German language Study and teaching (Higher) English speakers , Curriculum change South Africa , German language Textbooks History and criticism , Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Project) , Decolonization South Africa , Educational change South Africa , Social realism
- Language: English
- Type: Doctoral thesis , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/232657 , vital:50011 , DOI https://doi.org/10.21504/10962/232657
- Description: Commercial textbooks, aligned with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), are prescribed in almost all undergraduate GFL courses offered at South African universities. Although providing practical relevance and quality assurance, the CEFR-level descriptors were developed for the European context. The projected relevance and appropriateness of teaching materials presently implemented in German curricula in South African higher education have been determined in Germany, not for local contexts, but for learners vaguely described as “Anfänger” (Evans, et al., 2012, p. 8) and “Erwachsene und Jugendliche ab 16 Jahren” (Hueber, 2019, p. 11), often with a focus on learning for prospective German immigrants or for the use in refugee- or immigrant integration courses. However, the textbook occupies a central position in the GFL course because of the structured grammar progression that it lends to the curriculum. The variety of resources available to lecturers (tests, worksheets, online learning platform) and students (exercises, English-German glossary, English grammar explanations) is also an asset to GFL courses. Calls for the transformation and decolonisation of higher education have prompted academic disciplines to re-evaluate the common-sense assumptions which underpin knowledge practices in their curriculum. Following a social realist perspective and an exploratory case-study approach, this study presents a critical analysis of the textbook prescribed in the German Studies 1 course at Rhodes University and student experiences of the textbook to disentangle the complex relations which cause textbook praxis and lay bare power structures and tensions in the system. , Thesis (PhD) -- Humanities, School of Languages and Literatures, 2022
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- Date Issued: 2022-04-07
Pedagogic videos as a foreign language learning resource in textbooks used in the German studies section of a South African university: A digital multimodal discourse perspective
- Authors: Schafli, Sasha-Lee
- Date: 2021-04
- Subjects: Language and languages Study and teaching Audio-visual aids , Educational technology , Media programs (Education) , German language Study and teaching Foreign speakers Audio-visual aids , Visual learning , Rhodes University , German language Discourse analysis , Digital multimodal discourse analysis
- Language: English
- Type: Masters theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/177087 , vital:42789 , http://doi.org/10.21504/10962/113934
- Description: Video is a prominent teaching and learning tool within foreign language (FL) textbook media packages in the 21st century. While studies undertaken in the Global North highlight that video materials in the FL classroom have the potential to influence learning and cultural knowledge acquisition, there is a lack of research on the manner in which pedagogically designed videos influence adult FL learning and cultural knowledge acquisition in a South African context. In this study, I explore the opportunities and challenges in terms of language learning and cultural knowledge acquisition that arise from three pedagogic videos in the Menschen A1 textbook which is used in teaching students registered for the German Studies 1 course at Rhodes University. I compare and contrast two sets of data to examine the relationship between pedagogic video and student knowledge acquisition: the results of a digital multimodal discourse analysis (DMDA) of these videos, and questionnaires and transcriptions collected from semi-structured group interviews with German Studies 1 students. These questionnaires and transcriptions were analysed thematically. Findings in terms of the language learning experience indicate that actor over-exaggeration and visual aids assist students when learning German at this level with this type of video. However, these visual aids can be distracting and confusing without balanced representation and contextual information. Differences between videos in terms of speech rate seem to affect students’ perceptions of their ability to comprehend the videos. Students reported forming only positive impressions of German culture(s) on the basis of the videos. In general, students find Germans portrayed as friendly and helpful in the videos. The results of this investigation provide recommendations for the optimal use of this type of teaching and learning resource, for example, teachers/ lecturers/ facilitators should allow for focus group discussions on cultural discourse to occur in order to balance stereotype formation and should consider the speech rate of videos for language learning. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 2021
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- Date Issued: 2021-04
Exploring teaching and learning German as a foreign language at a South African institution of higher education: blended learning and collocations
- Authors: Ortner, Gwyndolen Jeanie
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: German language -- Study and teaching (Higher) -- South Africa , German language -- Study and teaching (Higher) -- Foreign speakers -- South Africa , German language -- Study and teaching (Higher) -- English speakers -- South Africa , Rhodes University -- Students , Rhodes University. German Studies
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/167295 , vital:41465
- Description: German Studies students at Rhodes University have normally never studied the German language before enrolling for the first-year course and face the challenge of a fairly rapid linguistic advancement, in a context with very limited exposure to the foreign language outside the classroom. Free writing is an area which students find particularly challenging as it requires students to syndissertatione grammatical and vocabulary knowledge. Furthermore, South African students are often underprepared for the challenges they face at university regarding language, technology and finance, as they try to to assimilate to the academic environment and gain epistemological access to their various subjects, in this case, language acquisition and the attendant modules of translation, literature and cultural studies. The use of technology in teaching and learning, known as blended learning, is said to produce better results than face-to face teaching alone, through creating opportunities for more autonomous student learning. Scholars of instructed second-language acquisition also suggest using technology to improve language instruction. One particular area which is gaining ground is teaching students collocational structures through exploring large language corpora, to improve students’ language competencies such as writing fluency. However, both blended learning practices and corpus-based teaching practices suggested by scholars are often not reported on in a particular teaching and learning context, taking into account factors such as institutional infrastructure, student and staff backgrounds and preparedness, and larger socio-political factors. Thus, it remains unclear how these practices (blended learning and corpus-based teaching of collocations) may be integrated into standard urricula, particularly for languages other than English, which have been severely under-researched. The purpose of this research is to take a context-based approach to language teaching and thereby investigate current blended learning practices for German Studies at Rhodes University in South Africa and explore through an action research approach how to integrate collocational awareness into the curriculum, within the blended learning model. Insights from corpus linguistics guide an adaptation of teaching practice, helping students develop skills to aid with writing fluency, seeking to make the patterned nature of language salient to our students. This is undertaken in a scaffolded way, within the curriculum, making use firstly of the texts to which students are exposed in the textbook (comprehensible input) as a source of collocational examples, and following this by making use of reallife language data from an online German corpus, DWDS. Findings from the study reveal a number of best practices related to the use of blended learning and teaching collocations in context of the German foreign language curriculum at a South African institution of higher education.
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- Date Issued: 2020
An action research approach: developing intercultural competence in German Studies at Rhodes University
- Authors: Collins, Morgan Gwyneth
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Action research in education -- South Africa -- Makhanda , German language -- Study and teaching -- Foreign speakers , Cultural relations , Multicultural education , World citizenship
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/63910 , vital:28505
- Description: The need to develop interculturally competent graduates is a concern for universities across the world. In South African universities this need is linked to globalization and increased diversity in terms of student demographics since 1994. Considering the legacy of apartheid, South African universities especially, and pressingly, need to respond to both global and national diversity concerns. ICC can play a significant role in creating more culturally inclusive spaces as students are provided with opportunities to “relate to and with people from vastly different cultural and ethnic backgrounds” (Spitzberg & Changnon, 2009, p. 4). In a similar way, Germany has faced, and continues to face, challenges relating to diversity especially in relation to migrants and as such, interculturality is a topic of debate in society and scholarly discourse. Therefore, ICC is as relevant to German society as it is South African society. Courses that explicitly deal with ICC are however, not common in South African universities and discourse, and as a result universities are “missing out on developing students’ intercultural competence” (Deardorff & Quinlan, 2016). This thesis aimed to address this gap by investigating the viability and necessity of introducing a module that deals explicitly with ICC into the German Studies course at Rhodes University. In doing so it contributed to the creation of disciplinary knowledge as well as furthering the aim of aiding the creation of responsible global citizenship, alongside ‘academic citizenship’, and aiding the internationalisation at home concept by encouraging the students to understand their own lived reality in a diverse society. This research made use of an action research approach to implementing a module and tracing its development. Student responses, as well as reflection and observation, found that a module dealing explicitly with ICC was viable and able to contribute to developing students’ sense of cultural self-awareness and their awareness of ICC as a set of transferrable skills and knowledges. This module aimed to serve as an introduction to ICC for students in order to begin to develop their intercultural competence and increase their awareness and critical approach to culture and intercultural encounters.
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- Date Issued: 2018
A corpus-based approach to writing in German as a foreign language in the South African tertiary context
- Authors: Ortner, Gwyndolen Jeanie
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:3660 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1021256
- Description: German Studies students at Rhodes University have normally never studied the German language before enrolling for the first-year course and face the challenge of a fairly rapid linguistic advancement in order to engage meaningfully with the literatures and cultures of German-speaking countries. This thesis investigates the process of teaching and learning to write in a more academic way in German as a foreign language at Rhodes University, using corpus linguistic tools for both analysis and instruction. The past 20 years have shown a shift from traditional teaching methods resting on notions of an underlying prescriptive grammar, to teaching based on insights from real-life language data (Gabrielatos, 2005; Krummes & Ensslin, 2012; Sinclair, 1997) and applications of corpora to teaching and learning have shown to be highly successful in many European contexts (Aijmer, 2010; Johns, 1991; Granger, et al., 2002; Varley, 2009). In the South African context however, this is a relatively new concept with few publications on the application of corpus linguistics to language teaching (Van Rooy, 2008), and one which does not seem to have reached its full potential. A writing course was instituted whose aim was two-fold: 1. to teach learners “every-day academic” German words (TAG words) and phrases (collocations) based on German mother-tongue corpus evidence; 2. to have learners write short assignments in German at regular intervals (Homstad & Thorson, 1996; Estes, et al., 1998); both aims with the overarching objective to improve the students’ academic register in German. After the writing course, 80% of the participants perceived that their writing had improved and specifically attributed this to the corpus-based instruction received during the writing course, and regular writing in German. Quantitative data (from the learner corpus created) shows a marked improvement in the use of the collocations taught. Moreover, participants (weaker students in particular) also found that their writing in English had improved as a result of the various exercises they had to complete as part of our German writing course.
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- Date Issued: 2016
The challenges of German-English literary translation: an exploration of Franz Kafka's Das Urteil (The Judgment) and Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis)
- Authors: Thabane, Mathaabe
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:3659 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1021181
- Description: This thesis conducts a study of literary translation using selected texts by Franz Kafka as translated from German into English in the mid-twentieth century and in the early twenty-first century. This study entails a three-fold orientation, namely: to show the extent of the impact of socio-historical, political and cultural factors on both the translation process and translation product; secondly, it demonstrates the fact that a merging of theoretical principles and practical methods is necessary and possible for the study of literary translations; thirdly, it answers the questions of why the same literary works continue to be retranslated and why every generation of Kafka scholars and readers will need their own translations of his works. This research, furthermore, proposes that the position of literary translation should be elevated since this kind of translation can reveal more about the cultural and linguistic intricacies of the translation process. Seeking to contribute to the broader framework of the translation studies discipline, this thesis also makes a case for translators to reveal their translation process, in the form of notes or prefaces, in order to allow for informed studies of translations. Finally, the research at hand proposes some considerations for further study into literary translations and shows new trends in the sub-field of literary translation which will undoubtedly shift its current nature and call for theoretical and practical applications for more classes of languages.
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- Date Issued: 2016
A history of the German settlers in the Eastern Cape, 1857-1919
- Authors: Zipp, Gisela Lesley
- Date: 2013
- Subjects: Colonists -- Eastern Cape -- 19th Century Immigrants -- Germany -- History Immigrants -- Germany -- Social life and customs
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:3609 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1004215
- Description: This thesis came into being as the result of a question innocently posed to me three years ago: Why do some towns in the Eastern Cape have German names? This thesis is not so much an answer to that question (which is answered in the following paragraphs) as an attempt to answer the questions that followed: Were the Germans really as benevolent and hard-working as much of the most readily available literature implies? Why did the military settlers leave and the peasant farmer settlers remain? What was the nature of relationships between the German settlers and other groups in the area? How did the German settlers see themselves? The existing literature provides the historic details, more or less, but not the context and explanations I sought. As such, I set out to find them and document them myself, addressing three main questions: 1. What was the (changing) nature of the German settlers' day-to-day lives between 1857 and 1919? 2. How was a German identity maintained/constructed within the German communities of the Eastern Cape between 1857 and 1919? 3. How did the Germans interact with other groups in the area? In answering these questions, I have also provided the necessary background as to why these settlers chose to come to South Africa, and why some of them left. I have limited this study to the period between 1857 and 1919 so as to include the First World War and its immediate aftermath, a time when enmity between Great Britain and Germany would have made life difficult for German descendants in the Union of South Africa. Introduction, p. 7.
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- Date Issued: 2013
The evolving image of the German Democratic republic as reflected in the works of Jurek Becker and Christa Wolf
- Authors: Williams, Alison Elizabeth
- Date: 2009
- Subjects: Becker, Jurek, 1937-1997 Wolf, Christa German fiction -- Germany (East) -- 20th Century Germany (East) -- History -- 20th Century Germany (East) In literature
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:3584 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002159
- Description: The primary objective of this thesis is to demonstrate the direct relationship between history and literature, with particular reference to literature published in the German Democratic Republic. It explores the period of history from 1945 to 1990 describing the collapse of National Socialist Germany after World War Two; the formation of the Federal Republic of Germany in the West and the German Democratic Republic in the East in 1949; the historical, political and cultural evolution of East Germany until the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, and finally the absorption of the German Democratic Republic into the Federal Republic of Germany in 1990.
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- Date Issued: 2009
The devil in disguise a comparative study of Thomas Mann's "Doktor Faustus" (1947) and Klaus Mann's "Mephisto" (1936), focussing on the role of art as an allegory of the rise and fall of Nazi Germany
- Authors: French, Rebecca S C
- Date: 2008
- Subjects: Mann, Thomas, 1875-1955 Doktor Faustus Mann, Klaus, 1906-1949 Mephisto Arts, German -- 20th Century Art, Germany -- 20th Century National socialism in art National socialism in literature
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:3582 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002157
- Description: This thesis compares the novels Doktor Faustus: das Leben des deutschen Tonsetzers Adrian Leverkühn, erzählt von einem Freunde (Thomas Mann) and Mephisto: Roman einer Karriere (Klaus Mann), insofar as they are portrayals of the situation in Germany during the Third Reich. Essentially a comparative study, I explore similarities and differences – thematic and conceptual – by situating both novels in their socio-historical moment (Chapter 1), exploring their conceptions of German national identity (Chapter 2), tracing intertextual connections to other works (Chapter 3), and, finally, examining their understanding of and reliance on art as insofar as it provides the allegorical framework for their respective portrayals of Nazi Germany (Chapter 4).
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- Date Issued: 2008