Responding to Donato and Brooks's (2004) call for undergraduate students to have more opportunities to engage in discourse at the advanced proficiency level, collaborative dialogues provide students with a situation conducive to language production and learning (Swain, 1997). As most of the research on collaborative dialogues has focused on the…

Where are German Studies heading? To answer this, a look backward into the development of German Studies might be useful. Starting with a brief overview, from the establishment of the first chair in 1776 to selected discussions of the curriculum of German Studies in English-speaking countries from the 19th century on, a number of -- at times…

The present article investigates foreign language teacher training quality enhancement by surveying pedagogical university students' opinions on important aspects of the course of Introduction to Germanic Linguistics within the Educational Programme for Bachelor's Degree in Education. The prime purpose is to study the perception of the…

More than ever, faculty need to ensure that undergraduate curricula not only provide students with tools to gain linguistic proficiency but also teach them to analyze both written and visual information to attain historical literacy. Developing both intercultural proficiency and insights into various historical memorialization processes ensures…

This study is based on the assumption that because the Holocaust is a significant part of Germany's history, culture, and national memory, it should be taught openly and honestly within German curricula. To ignore it would be to ignore an essential part of the country's identity, which in turn would lead teacher-scholars of German to impart a less…

Presents information on how and what is taught in courses on the "Age of Goethe." Two appendices are presented that list the institutions responding to a questionnaire concerning the teaching of this course and the less familiar texts of the period that are treated by some instructors. (GLR)

Describes a seminar on German women writers of the twentieth century given in English translation at Stanford University. The purpose was to enable young college women to identify with outstanding individuals in their fields. By exploring their works they would have a source of information on suitable female models. (TL)

Discusses the advantages of using children's stories in modern German culture classes. They are written in fairly simple language and transmit certain attitudes, values and behavior patterns, thereby showing how a society thinks. (Author/TL)

Discusses how poems, at the level of difficulty of "Grodek" by Georg Trakl, can be meaningfully incorporated into the German curriculm of high schools. A methodology for poetry analysis and interpretation is offered. (Text is in German.) (TL)

At the German Department of the University of South Carolina, courses of literature in translation and general cultural courses were open to all students of the university to offset low foreign language enrollments. The content, design and evaluation of these courses is presented. Films were extensively used as a medium of instruction. (TL)

The problems of teaching German literature survey courses have increased in the 1970's because of the drop in enrollment in language classes in general. Previously German literature courses (at the University of Utah) covered large amounts of material superficially; they were designed to familiarize the student with names of authors, titles of…