Volume 9 (2018) Issue 1
Foreword to the Issue
The first issue of this
year comes
with five
articles, three of them in English and two in German, the fields
dealt with being language policy, writing research, contrastive
analysis, pragmatics, and teaching German as a foreign language.
These
articles are complemented by one book review.
The first article by Ines
De Florio-Hansen (Kassel,
Germany) covers the “aims and effects of the language policy of the
Council of Europe (CoE)“,
with the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) recently
having been complemented by the so-called Companion
Volume with New Descriptors.
A short description of the overall language policy of the CoE taken
as a basis, the pros and cons of the CEFR are analysed and the
general function of the CEFR – to serve for ‘reference’ and not
to establish any kind of instructional obligation nor limitation - is
stressed. The problem of putting the different proficiency levels
described in the CEFR into classroom practice is identified as one of
the major deficiencies of the CEFR. The Companion
Volume with New Descriptors, then,
offers improvements,
but still does not sufficiently treat intercultural
discourse competence, the descriptions of
plurilingualism and pluriculturalism
not sufficiently complying with multilinguality and interculturality.
Next,
the European Language Portfolio (ELP) is described with reference to
one of its main goals, i.e. to foster learner self-assessment. In the
same vein, chances are shown of how to train students to make the
best possible use of the ELP and other comparable portfolios.
Focusing
on French taught to American university students, Thomas
Tinnefeld (Saarbrücken,
Germany) &
Frédérique
Grim (Fort
Colins (CO), USA) present a case study on Constrastive Analysis
and discuss
the
question of whether the contrastive approach represents a functional
option to improve students' foreign language command. A research design consisting of a pretest, a teaching phase
and
a
posttest was carried out,
all this being done
in
sophomore classes at a medium-sized American university. Findings
showed that the sole use of contrastive analysis
approximately
had
the same positive effects on students' learning progress as the
contrastive approach used with reference to cognition and
awareness-raising.
The
third article in this issue being more specific in scope,
Anna
Wing-bo Tso & Winnee
Siu-yee Ho (both
Hong Kong) address
academic writing, which of utmost importance for any
university student. As
the development of academic literacy is increasingly in the focus of
interest and as university writing courses often fail to bring about
successful outcomes, in their empirical study, the authors focus on
the principal problems that occur to students when attending
first-year writing courses. Challenges teachers
face
in these courses are
also
discussed.
The
two subsequent articles are in German, the first of them being
situated in a Macedonian and the second one in a German context.
Biljana
Ivanovska (Štip, Republic
of Macedonia) & Gëzim
Xhaferri (Tetovo,
Republic of Macedonia) examine an interview with the Macedonian
president published by the German daily Bild
in its online edition. The authors analyse this interview
which
deals with the
current political situation in the region and that
of refugees on the Macedonian-Greek border. In their pragmatic
approach based on Searle, the authors found that
in
this interview situation, in which
some
speech acts were
deliberately
conceived
in such a way as to express meaning that was different from what was
actually said, some
linguistic
means played
an
especially important role for achieving the desired effect.
In
the last (but not least) article of the present issue, Eleni
Peleki (Lüneburg,
Germany) presents an empirical survey focusing on special-needs
students who participated in a remedial training project for young
migrant learners in Germany. The
author's findings
lead to a set of recommandations both for the training and the daily
practice of teachers of German as a second language.
The
book review that completes the present issue is on Frank Kostrzewa’s
latest book on the acquisition and teaching of German as a foreign
language, which is predominantly, but by far not exclusively,
targeted at Korean learners of German and also covers language
acquisition and teaching in a far more general perspective than just
with regards to German.
Finally,
editor and editorial advisory board cordially thank the authors for their
contributions and wish our readers – regular and new ones – an
informative reading.
Thomas
Tinnefeld
JLLT
Editor