A corpus-based approach to writing in German as a foreign language in the South African tertiary context

Abstract

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. Keywords: Academic literacy, everyday academic writing, corpus linguistics, learner corpora, German studies, case study, writing-to-learn, transferrable skills/procedure