1. Introduction
1.1 Contours and profile of the academic field under review
Ever since the mid-1970s, when the new subject area referred to as ‘interlanguage studies’ became gradually institutionalized, the amount of empirical research into the teaching and learning of L2 German has steadily increased. However, during the past decade this growth has been exceptionally distinctive, not just in terms of the sheer number of publications, but also with regard to their theoretical and methodological sophistication. Given the growing number of acquisitional studies conducted in different countries and located within different research traditions and schools of thought, this appears to be a good time to review past accomplishments and assess future needs in terms of research areas and methodology. Far from representing an isolated field of research concerned only with the requirements and policies of its own subject matter, empirical research into L2 German now largely contributes to the international endeavour of research in L2 acquisition, applied linguistics, and foreign language (FL) teaching. We therefore welcome the goal of Language Teaching to ‘bring to the attention of our wide L2 readership research work that needs to reach a larger audience, aware as we are that perhaps too much of what is published and viewed these days is based on exclusively L2 English applications’ (quoted from the information for contributors). In accordance with this goal, we hope that a review of recent research in L2 German will not only be of interest to experts in the L2 German field, but also to the wider applied linguistics community.
Deutsch als Fremdsprache (DaF) or German as a Foreign Language (GFL) as an academic field of inquiry has come a long way since the introduction of German language courses at German universities in the early 1970s on a large-scale basis (see Götze & Blei Reference Götze, Blei and Helbig2001). While these courses originally arose out of the practical need to prepare an increasing number of immigrants for academic and vocational survival in Germany, two recent mile-stones indicate the maturity of the field. The first is the publication of the two-volume handbook Deutsch als Fremdsprache – Ein internationales Handbuch [GFL – An international handbook] (Helbig et al. Reference Helbig, Götze, Henrici and Krumm2001). With its 182 contributions, the handbook impressively demonstrates the scope, depth and breadth of studies undertaken in the field.
The second incident we would like to mention here is an extended debate about the contours and profile of the discipline in the journal Deutsch als Fremdsprache between 1996 and 1999, sparked off by some – as it turned out – highly controversial theses about the structure of the discipline (see Götze & Suchsland Reference Götze and Suchsland1999). Most of the contributors to this debate would agree with the idea that GFL constitutes ‘a homogenous subject matter with different tasks and main emphases, with the theory and practice of learning and teaching L2 German as their center’ (Götze & Suchsland Reference Götze and Suchsland1999: 76; throughout the paper, all translations from German into English are by the authors). With respect to the subject matter as institutionalized at German universities, these emphases include orientations that focus on the investigation of either (i) learning processes and the learning-teaching relationship, (ii) linguistics of the German language, (iii) German literature, or (iv) German cultural studies. In conclusion, the debate made it clear that ‘the how of learning/teaching cannot be separated from what has to be learned/taught (the German language as a foreign language). The identification of the subject matter leads to the conclusion that GFL is not just applied German philology or applied German linguistics, but also not just applied L2 acquisition research’ (Helbig Reference Helbig1997: 135, as cited in Götze & Suchsland Reference Götze and Suchsland1999: 78; translated from German; original emphasis). Although we subscribe to such an integrative view, in our opinion the self-assertion of the academic discipline in an era of decreasing state funding and an increasing need for accountability will rest on the field's capacity to establish itself as an autonomous and successful academic discipline (in terms of student education, teachers' professional development, research output, and external research funding) with an international structure.
1.2 L2 German in German-speaking countries and in the world
A review of research on L2 German learning and teaching may also be particularly timely as it is not only developments from within the profession that re-shape the field, but also recent political changes which continue to have a strong bearing on the way L2 German is promoted, learned, taught and assessed.
In Germany, the sobering results of the ‘Programme for International Student Assessment’ study (PISA; see Baumert et al. Reference Baumert, Klieme, Neubrand, Prenzel, Schiefele, Schneider, Stanat, Tillmann and Weiß2001) have brought the public at large as well as politicians to the conclusion that students in elementary and secondary schools often do not reach the required levels of linguistic competence. This seems to be particularly true for at-risk learners from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds and for non-native learners from migrant families (Gogolin Reference Gogolin, Krumm and Portmann-Tselikas2006). One consequence has been that after 25 years of ‘test abstinence’ and even ‘test aversion’ (Roth Reference Roth, Bainski and Krüger-Potratz2008) in general and specifically in language pedagogy, most federal states in Germany have now introduced linguistic diagnoses of oral language abilities of pre-school children (see Gogolin, Neumann & Roth Reference Gogolin, Neumann and Roth2005; Ahrenholz Reference Ahrenholz2007). Though this step is preventive in nature, ideally leading not to selection and stigmatization, but rather to individualized language support both in the heritage and the additional language, the relevant discussion in politics and applied linguistics is extremely controversial (e.g., Ehlich Reference Ehlich2005: Krumm Reference Krumm, Kühn, Lehker and Timmermann2005). No less disputed are the immigration laws that came into effect in 2005, allowing, for the first time since the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany, the naturalization of certain immigrants on condition of passing an obligatory test of linguistic proficiency and historic-political knowledge (Rübeling Reference Rübeling2003).
In contrast to the attempts at limiting the overall number of immigrants, efforts have been made to increase the attractiveness of Germany for international students. Three developments are worth mentioning in this context. First, the adjustment of tertiary education to fit in with Anglo-American BA- and MA-programs and degrees (Caspar-Hehne, Koreik & Middeke Reference Casper-Hehne, Koreik and Middeke2006); second, the introduction of international study programs partly or completely taught in English (Motz Reference Motz2005); and third, the development and worldwide implementation of the standardized university admission test TestDaF (Grotjahn Reference Grotjahn, Milanovic and Weir2004a).
In the European context, the implementation of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe 2001) has had broad implications for L2 German pedagogy (Schneider Reference Schneider, Krumm and Portmann-Tselikas2006). In contrast to the rapidly growing demand for language support programs in L2 German within the German-speaking countries, internationally the number of students of German is steadily decreasing, with at times devastating implications for German departments worldwide (see James & Tschirner Reference James, Tschirner and Helbig2001 for the USA, and Helbig et al. Reference Helbig, Götze, Henrici and Krumm2001 for other countries). In response to its decreasing communicative value as a lingua franca (Darquennes & Nelde Reference Darquennes and Nelde2006), L2 German has been suggested as a language of cultural reflection (Kramsch Reference Kramsch, Krumm and Portmann-Tselikas2006) and political emancipation (Ngatcha Reference Ngatcha, Krumm and Portmann-Tselikas2006).
1.3 Criteria for the selection of references
For inclusion in this review, we have selected studies published or completed between 2002 and 2008. In order to outline continuous research traditions beyond this rather arbitrary cut-off point, we will, however, refer to earlier work if necessary. The emphasis is on empirical research rather than on descriptions of pedagogical practice. However, as research on L2 German within the German-speaking countries is dominated by textual-hermeneutic studies in some subject areas, we will include some of this work where appropriate. Furthermore, the selected studies deal with L2 German language teaching and learning (in pedagogic as well as other settings) as their main object of enquiry, although occasionally research is included where L2 German is investigated alongside other languages. The range of studies covered spans major international and national journals, books, edited volumes, conference proceedings and doctoral dissertations. Although the orientation of this review is global, most of the studies originate from Europe and North America. While L2 German is still widely taught and learned in, for example, Eastern Europe or in the former German colonies in sub-Saharan Africa, these areas are underrepresented in terms of empirical research due to the emergence of the academic field, the overall socio-economic situation, or linguistic or material inaccessibility of some research reports to us.
The review is divided into two parts. In part 1 (this issue), section 2 covers studies on the acquisition of grammatical and pragmatic categories. Although some of the studies reviewed in this section refer to ‘tutored’ language development, they account neither (or only peripherally) for particular contextual conditions for language learning nor for the course of actions learners may deliberately take to direct their learning. These studies, though highly heterogeneous, tend to conceptualize language learners as the site where language development takes place, rather than seeing them as reflexive and intentional individuals acting in a social world. Language learning as an intentional activity is dealt with in section 3. In this section, and to the extent that it has addressed L2 German, research on individual differences such as age and motivation is reviewed, as well as research on learner strategies and learner autonomy. In part 2 of the review (to be published in Language Teaching 43.1, 2010) we review research that is concerned with the relationship between L2 learning and L2 teaching. These studies have not just made use of face-to-face or virtual environments that are created for accelerated L2 learning for the purpose of data collection, but are essentially concerned with the impact of contextual factors and pedagogical choices on learning conditions, learning processes, and learning outcomes.
2. Language development
2.1 Phonology
The area of pronunciation acquisition generally does not attract much attention although pronunciation may arguably be the strongest indicator of native or non-native speech, and may play a large role in how intelligible non-native speakers are. Teachers generally find it difficult to teach pronunciation, specifically prosodic features, despite the fact that the latter in particular are important in communicative encounters. O'Brien (Reference O'Brien2004) presents data that point to the common assumption that pronunciation, particularly prosodic features, is best learned under immersion or study-abroad conditions. She compared 34 American third-year German students studying at the University of Freiburg for a full academic year with a control group of 26 third-year students taking classes at their American university only. Students read out loud the same short text both at the beginning and the end of their third year. Readings were recorded and rated by ten German native speakers in Germany. Only the students studying in Freiburg received significantly higher ratings by the end of the third year than they did at the beginning. They were also rated significantly higher than the control group at the end of the year.
A rather different take on the acquisition of a native-like accent is given by Marx (Reference Marx2002), who approaches it from the perspective of socio-cultural theory, in which how, where and why learners act as they do is as important as what they do. Marx provides a first-person account of her experience as a native speaker of Canadian English appropriating a German accent while living in Germany for over three years and becoming a legitimate participant in the German culture. Using the metaphor of self-translation as developed by Pavlenko (Reference Pavlenko1998), Marx describes several phases of her acquisition of a German accent as a mirror of her shifting identities moving from displacement and the beginning stages of loss toward a native-speaker accent in German and the construction of a German identity and the beginning attrition of her native language to her re-entry into her L1 and its reconstruction and renewal. There is clearly a need to explore these and other questions related to the acquisition of L2 phonology further, in particular with respect to the L2 acquisition of German.
2.2 Morphology and syntax
From the early 1970s onwards, research on the acquisition of L2 German has made substantial contributions to the still young discipline of SLA. Against the socio-political backdrop of the large number of immigrant workers recruited from Southern Europe, a number of studies conducted in Germany investigated non-native linguistic features of what they referred to as Pidgin-Deutsch (‘Pidgin-German’; Heidelberger Forschungsprojekt ‘Pidgin-Deutsch’ 1975) and Gastarbeiterdeutsch (‘Guest worker German’; Clahsen, Meisel & Pienemann Reference Clahsen, Meisel and Pienemann1983). The basic assumption is that L2 acquisition is cumulative and implicational by nature, with L2 structures which are less demanding in terms of cognitive processing forming the prerequisite for the acquisition of the more complex ones. Firstly, and based on the above-mentioned databases, ‘universal’ developmental sequences for L2 German were claimed, and were located on a ‘developmental axis’. Secondly, these universal sequences had to be reconciled with observed individual variation. Between-subject variation was explained as communication strategies contingent on social and individual factors, and was located on a reduction-vs.-elaboration-strategies axis (cf. the ‘multi-dimensional model of L2 acquisition’; Clahsen et al. Reference Clahsen, Meisel and Pienemann1983).
Although this branch of research is essentially cognitive in its conceptualization of L2 development, and L2 pedagogy was and is certainly not one of its main concerns, claims with respect to its pedagogical implications have been put forward now and again. Building upon the ideas articulated in the multi-dimensional model, Pienemann's Teachability Hypothesis (Pienemann Reference Pienemann1989), for example, is a specification of the ‘rate vs. route’ debate: explicit teaching of core grammar cannot alter the route of acquisition, but can potentially increase its rate if, and only if, the learners are developmentally ‘ready’, i.e. can process and have thus acquired less-complex linguistic L2 structures and operations (Processability Theory; Pienemann Reference Pienemann and Pienemann2005). Furthermore, variation which is likely to occur is predicted and is specified (‘hypothesis space’; Pienemann Reference Pienemann and Pienemann2005). Undoubtedly, the potential of the original multi-dimensional model and the processability theory lie in the fact that they claim explanatory and predictive power in terms of observable developments in core grammar oral L2 performance. Renewed claims for the pedagogic relevance of processability theory for L2 teaching (e.g., Keßler Reference Keßler, Eckerth and Siekmann2008), however, face at least two challenges: First, how one can diagnose the developmental readiness of individual students in a class, and second, what kind of pedagogical conclusions one can draw from the results of such diagnosis.
A response to the first issue has been developed under the name of ‘Rapid Profile’ (http://groups.uni-paderborn.de/rapidprofile), a computer-based procedure that ‘provides an empirically tested diagnostic tool for classroom practice which yields linguistic profiles of learner language development’ (Keßler Reference Keßler, Eckerth and Siekmann2008: 290). In Germany, this screening procedure, which may take up to 15 minutes per learner, has recently been implemented in German secondary schools for L2 English and is currently under development for L2 German.
Highly controversial is the debate on the second issue, the pedagogical implications of L2 core grammar development. Diehl et al. (Reference Diehl, Christen, Leuenberger, Pelvat and Studer2000: 377ff.) and Keßler (Reference Keßler, Eckerth and Siekmann2008: 303) have put forward three pedagogic suggestions. Firstly, the increased use of communicative tasks which encourage the authentic (i.e., purposeful and meaning-oriented) use of the L2 in the classroom, so that grammatical structures can be acquired implicitly; secondly, the profiling of learners in a class so that form-oriented pair- and group-work can be based on the developmental readiness of individual students; and thirdly, the adaptation of course curricula in accordance with the attested developmental sequences.
The first two recommendations are far from being new. Pleas for the increased communicative use of the L2 in class while at the same time reducing the amount of teacher-led metalinguistic grammar explanation have been repeated ever since the ‘communicative turn’ in L2 pedagogy. Moreover, within the current modes of communicative language teaching, content-based (Lyster Reference Lyster2007; Stoller Reference Stoller, Van Deussen-Scholl and Hornberger2008), task-based (Eckerth Reference Eckerth, Eckerth and Siekmann2008), and content and language integrated (CLIL; Vollmer Reference Vollmer, Eckerth and Siekmann2008), it has been argued, inter alia, that the increased use of pair- and group-work would allow for a better differentiation between the proficiency levels, learning goals, and learning preferences of individual students. However, given the complexity of the debate on the interface between implicit and explicit L2 knowledge (e.g., Ellis Reference Ellis2006), and the function of form-focused instruction within an overall communicative curriculum (Williams Reference Williams and Hinkel2005), it seems rather naïve to rely just on ‘rich input’, hoping that such input will trigger sufficient implicit learning processes (as insinuated in Diehl et al. Reference Diehl, Christen, Leuenberger, Pelvat and Studer2000: 379). L2 teaching will inevitably be doomed to failure if it attempts to imitate ‘natural’ SLA – after all, based on an extremely limited amount of L2 input and L2 contact time, L2 pedagogy seeks to provide a shortcut to acquisition.
No less problematic is the suggestion to revise the grammatical progression of course curricula in accordance with developmental sequences. Though the Processability Theory is now based on a relatively broad empirical basis of written and spoken (e.g., Jansen Reference Jansen2008) language samples and has been applied to languages which are typologically distant from German (Pienemann Reference Pienemann and Pienemann2005), other work has produced diverging results. For example, in a very ambitious large-scale study, Diehl and colleagues (Diehl et al. Reference Diehl, Christen, Leuenberger, Pelvat and Studer2000; Diehl, Pistorius & Dietl Reference Diehl, Pistorius, Dietl, Börner and Vogel2002) investigated acquisitional sequences in L2 German of francophone adolescents in Swiss secondary schools, and the relationship between acquisitional and instructional sequences. Based on the analysis of 1800 writing samples collected over the period of two years from 300 students in 30 different classrooms, the authors could not find any developmental sequences for noun, gender and number, but report relatively invariable developmental sequences in the acquisition of verb morphology, word order and case, although these are partly inconsistent with the sequences modelled by Pienemann (Reference Pienemann and Pienemann2005). For example, Diehl et al. (Reference Diehl, Christen, Leuenberger, Pelvat and Studer2000, Reference Diehl, Pistorius, Dietl, Börner and Vogel2002) found subordinate clause structure to be controlled earlier than subject-verb inversion; and subject-verb agreement to be controlled at roughly the same time as the split predicate. Furthermore, Diehl et al.'s results are consistent with the findings of Lund (Reference Lund2004) and Terrasi-Haufe (Reference Terrasi-Haufe2004), with the results of the latter being based on corpora of written and spoken language.
Given the partly inconsistent results of studies operating within different frameworks, and inconsistencies in the interpretation of data (see Meerholz-Härle & Tschirner Reference Meerholz-Härle, Tschirner, Aguado and Riemer2001), one might not feel too comfortable about using these results as a basis for far-reaching decisions such as the fundamental revision of grammar curricula. Furthermore, the grammatical progression(s) suggested by developmental studies do not correspond with a progression for communicative purposes. Finally, in order to develop teaching materials and to base pedagogic decisions on learners' individual language profiles, much more about these profiles has to be known than just the relative control of basic word order (see Haberzettl Reference Haberzettl2005 and Ott Reference Ott2006 for word order, Menzel Reference Menzel2004 and Mika Reference Mika2005 for gender, Timmermann 2004 and Schumacher Reference Schumacher2005 for tense, and Möllering 2005 for modal particles).
Overall, we suggest that what is still missing, both in research on the acquisition of L2 German as in the field of SLA as a whole, is a stronger integration of cognitive and psycholinguistic research on the one hand, and socio-cultural and socio-psychological perspectives on the other. From early on it has been hypothesized within cognitive accounts of SLA that motivation, strategy use, interactive style and the willingness to take risks are factors likely to determine long-term L2 attainment (e.g., Perdue & Klein Reference Perdue and Klein1992). However, although these psychological and interactional factors were acknowledged as causing inter-individual variation, they were considered as ‘noise’ rather than as ‘data’, and have therefore never been seriously integrated in empirical designs or theory building. At the same time, research that emphasizes the role of learner agency, motivation and attitude, as well as interactional opportunities for L2 use, ‘rarely conducts in-depth linguistic analyses, making it impossible to statistically link experiential factors to specific phonological, morphological, syntactic and pragmatic features’ (Moyer Reference Moyer2004a: 52). This conceptual divide, we suggest, does not do justice to SLA: thirty years after Schumann's ‘acculturation model for L2 acquisition’ (Schumann Reference Schumann1978), there is a renewed interest in and evidence of the fundamental interrelatedness of affect and cognition. Allocation of attentional resources, for example, in interactionists' accounts of SLA of critical importance, is assumed to be affected by L2 users' attitudinal and motivational dispositions (e.g. Crookes & Schmidt Reference Crookes and Schmidt1991, and Eckerth & Riemer Reference Eckerth, Riemer and Riemer2000 with respect to instructed L2 German acquisition). In the same vein, Moyer presents some evidence of the impact of immigrants' and long-term residents' attitude toward the target language and culture on their ultimate phonologic L2 attainment (Moyer Reference Moyer2004b, Reference Moyer2007; see section 3.3 on the age factor). To develop more comprehensive perspectives on L2 development, including cognitive, interactional, psychological and socio-cultural factors, and to situate them in an integrative theoretical framework, will constitute one of the major challenges for the years to come.
2.3 Lexicon
As has been the case with phonology, German L2 lexical acquisition has not received much attention. Practically all studies that deal with lexical development are concerned with incidental vocabulary learning through reading. Schmidt (Reference Schmidt2004) focuses on the effects of vocabulary size, general reading competence, and contextual clues on the learning of pseudo words. Sixteen advanced Japanese learners of German residing in Germany and sixteen German native speakers were given a reading test, a vocabulary test, and a task on incidental vocabulary learning based on narrative texts with pseudo words. Despite lower vocabulary knowledge, learners of German were as good as native speakers in identifying word meaning from contextual clues. While vocabulary size did not seem to contribute to lexical learning in this study, there was a strong correlation between reading proficiency and learning word meaning from context. Although contextual clues did not have a major effect on L2 lexical learning, a noticeable effect did occur with learners of German while there was none with German native speakers.
In a series of articles (Rott, Williams & Cameron Reference Rott, Williams and Cameron2002; Rott & Williams Reference Rott and Williams2003; Rott Reference Rott2005), Rott and colleagues looked at the effects of L1 multiple-choice glosses on lexical learning and retention. Rott et al. (Reference Rott, Williams and Cameron2002) compared the effects of L1 multiple-choice glosses with L2 text reconstruction tasks on learning and found significantly deeper productive and receptive word gains immediately after the treatment. However, a long-term effect was noticeable only for receptive word gain and only for the group that had worked with both, glosses and text reconstruction tasks. In a similar study, Rott & Williams (Reference Rott and Williams2003) found that L1 multiple-choice glosses triggered a search for concrete meaning and led to firm form–meaning mappings; that multiple encounters of glossed words helped readers to gain semantic information and refine their understanding of the unknown words; and that glosses led to more detailed text processing and improved text comprehension. Finally, Rott (Reference Rott2005) explored the different effects of L1 multiple-choice glosses and single-translation glosses on strengthening lexical form–meaning connections and on text comprehension. In both conditions the target words occurred three more times in the text after the first glossed occurrence. Using a think-aloud procedure, Rott concluded that the integration of multiple meta-cognitive and semantic-elaborative resources, the repeated search and evaluation of individual word meanings, and recursive reading strategies triggered by multiple-choice glosses led to more robust and complete form-meaning mappings, while weaker form–meaning mappings were marked by the use of only meta-cognitive resources, linear text processing, and a lack of motivation to assign concrete word meaning. In addition, multiple-choice glosses helped readers to comprehend more supporting ideas.
Thus, data from L2 German vocabulary acquisition studies support the notions that reading may lead to incidental vocabulary learning; that incidental vocabulary learning may be strengthened by tasks requiring learners to increase their mental effort in dealing with unknown words; that such tasks increase learners' text comprehension; and that reading proficiency and incidental vocabulary learning are strongly correlated.
For a study not limited to lexical variation but inquiring into language variation generally, one might usefully read Kunschak's (Reference Kunschak2004) empirical contribution on American L2 German college students' awareness and attitudes toward L1 varieties (such as American, New Zealand, British and Canadian English) and L2 varieties (such as Austrian, German and Swiss German).
2.4 Interlanguage pragmatics
Interlanguage pragmatics is one of the fields of applied linguistics and language teaching that has seen a sharp increase of research interest in the past decade. Since the seminal publication of Rose & Kasper (Reference Rose and Kasper2001), who consider their edited volume to be the ‘first [one] devoted solely to classroom research on interlanguage pragmatics’ (Rose & Kasper Reference Rose and Kasper2001: xi), quite a number of empirical studies have been published – some of them with specific reference to L2 German – which we will discuss in part 2 of the article (section 4). Additionally, interlanguage pragmatics has also been at the center of attention of GFL acquisition studies in non-classroom contexts, and we would like to highlight some of the particularly interesting contributions to this field.
Barron's (Reference Barron2003) and Belz's (Reference Belz2003) studies both relied on pragmalinguistic approaches to inquire into the topics of longitudinal development of Irish study abroad students' speech acts and the development of intercultural competence in an American–German telecollaboration project. In her doctoral dissertation, Barron (Reference Barron2003) combined pre- and post-year abroad questionnaires as well as retrospective interviews and assessment questionnaires with discourse completion tasks and free discourse completion tasks which were filled out by the study participants on three occasions over a period of 15 months. Using Selinker's (Reference Selinker1972) ‘traditional interlanguage design’ (Barron Reference Barron2003: 116), she compared the longitudinal data of GFL learners at an Irish university college spending a year abroad studying in Germany with those of native speakers of German and of native speakers of English. Her focus was on the three speech acts – requests, offers, and refusals on offers – and she used the discourse-analytic framework developed by Edmondson (Reference Edmondson1981) and Edmondson & House (Reference Edmondson and House1981) to code her data in a linguistically fine-grained way in order to compare the three groups with regard to frequency development of the L2 group in specific linguistic features over time. Her findings ‘add[ed] to the existing research body on possible stages of acquisition as regards the relative ease or difficulty with which various speech acts are mastered’ (Barron Reference Barron2003: 249), and allowed her to give detailed pragmalinguistic descriptions of developmental phenomena that, we believe, can serve other researchers in the field of language learning, be it GFL (e.g., research on the use of discourse markers in the L2 German classroom; Dailey-O'Cain & Liebscher Reference Dailey-O'Cain and Liebscher2006) or any other FL, to use – or develop –similarly detailed discourse-analytic coding sytems (for non-empirical descriptive and comparative studies in this field, see Bohm Reference Bohm2003; Maiwald Reference Maiwald, Wierlacher, Eggers, Engel, Kelletat, Krumm, Krusche and Bohrer2003; Overstreet Reference Overstreet2005).
Belz's (Reference Belz2003) contribution on the development of intercultural competence in telecollaboration is just as inspiring in terms of the detailed linguistic perspective it takes. Using the theoretical framework of appraisal theory and epistemic modality, she focused on ‘the ways in which lexico-grammar may operate as a site for formation, dissemination, but also contestation of speaker's attitudinal positionings or value systems’ as well as ‘the linguistic resources speakers use in order to express their degree of willingness to commit to the truth of a particular proposition’ (Belz Reference Belz2003: 70). She drew on a larger data corpus stemming from a telecollaborative partnership to examine the chronologically sequenced email-correspondence of two German students of English with an American GFL student who disengages from his German keypals after seven weeks. Like Barron's analysis, Belz's study used detailed discourse-analytic coding based on an explicit theory and thus allowed for insights into the differences in frequency of the occurrence of certain pragmalinguistic aspects. From her analysis of the differences in appraisals and epistemic modality of the German and American students, she concluded, among other aspects, that ‘American learners of German should be able to use modal particles in order to intensify and mitigate their engagement with the truth value of their utterances’ (Belz Reference Belz2003: 92). Thus, her work illuminated, like Barron's (Reference Barron2003), how studies in interlanguage pragmatics contribute to cross-cultural studies or contrastive pragmatics, but at the same time provide empirical findings on language learners' development.
Several the recent works on interlanguage pragmatics seem not only to be inspired by pragmalinguistic approaches, but also by what Block (Reference Block2003) has called the ‘social turn in L2 acquisition’. The famous debate on the nature of L2 acquisition research in The Modern Language Journal sparked by Firth & Wagner (Reference Firth and Wagner1997; also see Block Reference Block2007) has left us with the paradigmatic distinction of (and quite often a great divide between) the psycholinguistic and the socio-cultural approach to L2 acquisition. Taking up one of Firth & Wagner's (Reference Firth and Wagner1997) keywords, Ohm (Reference Ohm2004: 49) characterized his own perspective on the L2 acquisition of immigrants as emic – and as driven by a desire to investigate the L2 acquisition of ‘real people in real life’ (Ohm Reference Ohm2004: 47, translated from German). The particular methodological contribution of his case study of two female adult GFL speakers lies in its exploration of the autobiographical-narrative interview as a means for analyzing the ‘specific configurations of learner contributions to SLA in the overall process structures of the informants' lives’ (translated from Ohm Reference Ohm2004: 62). Taking the term ‘learner contributions’ from Breen's (Reference Breen and Breen2001) work, Ohm (Reference Ohm2004: 63) placed his own study, conducted in the tradition of the German sociologist Fritz Schütze, into the context of the Anglo–American discourse of advocators' of the socio-cultural paradigm (e.g., Lantolf Reference Lantolf2000; Pavlenko Reference Pavlenko and Cook2002; Block Reference Block2003; Ohm Reference Ohm, Eßer and Krumm2007).
Also referring to Lantolf (Reference Lantolf2000) and a Vygotskyian (Reference Vygotsky1978) approach, Belz & Kinginger (Reference Belz and Kinginger2003: 594) situated their acquisition study of a specific linguistic aspect in ‘the framework of a microgenetic, socio-cultural approach to language learning and use’. In a corpus of 425 emails and 55 synchronous chat transcripts gathered from a German–American telecollaborative partnership between EFL and GFL classes at the tertiary level, these authors investigated North American GFL learners' use of the informal second-person singular pronoun Du as opposed to the formal Sie over a time span of two months. They retraced the development of eleven GFL learners with regard to the explicit peer assistance they received from their German partners, and their linguistic development. Drawing on the by-now classic work of Lave & Wenger (Reference Lave and Wenger1991) and their concept of legitimate peripheral participation, Belz & Kinginger (Reference Belz and Kinginger2003: 641) argued that ‘telecollaboration with L2 expert speakers of German legitimize[d] the participation of classroom learners with relevant social contexts’, and that ‘this participation [led] to an increase in appropriate pronoun use over time’. Furthermore, they perceived their study to illustrate that metaphors other than ‘acquisition’ – such as ‘participation’ (see Sfard Reference Sfard1998; Ochs Reference Ochs2000) or ‘apprenticeship’ (see Kramsch Reference Kramsch2002) – were valuable for the study of pragmatic competence (Belz & Kinginger Reference Belz and Kinginger2003: 641). What we find especially inspiring in their study with regard to future research is their demonstration that, given an impressive corpus of longitudinal data, specific aspects of pragmatic development can actually be traced and can, innovatively, also be related to interactional aspects (see also Belz 2004 on adult FL play, a case study based on the corpus of the same telecollaborative course).
This exciting nexus between a precise linguistic and an interactional focus is a theme revisited in Bongartz & Schneider's (Reference Bongartz and Schneider2003) case study of two brothers. Focusing on two English-speaking boys aged 5 and 7 and their acquisition of L2 German, Bongartz & Schneider (Reference Bongartz and Schneider2003) provided an interesting attempt at bridging the gap between an interactionist framework and a cognitive-linguistic framework in order to better understand L2 acquisition. Using extensive transcripts of authentic play interaction documented over twelve months, these researchers combined insights from an ethnographic study by the mother-researcher with psycholinguistic analyses of grammatical development. From an interactionist perspective, the data were analyzed with regard to language play and negotiations; sound play, word play, narratives, as well as insults and ‘tough guy’ talk emerged as relevant categories of language play. From a psycholinguistic perspective in the tradition of Clahsen et al. (Reference Clahsen, Meisel and Pienemann1983), adopting the criteria of dependent clauses and phrasal complexity, the authors analyzed the boys' syntactic and phrasal development. They interpreted their data to show that ‘different interactional strategies [led] to different opportunities for practice’ (Bongartz & Schneider Reference Bongartz and Schneider2003: 33), which, in turn, resulted in different developmental stages. Interestingly, this study modeled ‘the process of bringing quantitative descriptive data of individual performance together with qualitative data from interactive social practice’, as Bongartz & Schneider (Reference Bongartz and Schneider2003: 14) themselves pointed out. As an important theoretical contribution that we believe will inspire future research in L2 acquisition, it identified a new element in the process of bringing the social and the linguistic domains together, ‘namely that of linguistic choice motivated by individual interactional preferences’ (p. 33).
Another most insightful case study was Levine's (forthcoming) contribution on the significance of learners' interactional choices for the development of intercultural competence. Like Belz & Kinginger (Reference Belz and Kinginger2003), Levine (forthcoming) was inspired by Lave & Wenger's notion of legitimate peripheral participation. He used a discourse-analytic approach in the vein of Gee (Reference Gee2005) to conduct a multiple case study of 16 GFL speakers from eight different countries living in Berlin. His data corpus consisted of interviews with the participants, learner journals, and audio recordings of everyday interactions made by participants carrying a portable audio recorder. He highlighted the importance of others, i.e. the importance of participation for L2 acquisition – an aspect his study shared with Belz & Kinginger (Reference Belz and Kinginger2003) – as well as the importance of learners' interactional choices with regard to how their identities and their roles as legitimate peripheral participants are enacted – an aspect that linked up with Bongartz & Schneider's (Reference Bongartz and Schneider2003) focus on different learner personalities. For a related attempt to reconstruct situated identities, including membership categories and interaction-internal participant statuses in tutored conversation for learning, see also the discussion of Kasper's (Reference Kasper2004) conversation-analytic study in the second part of this review.
Our discussion of GFL-related empirical studies on interlanguage pragmatics has shown that this is a particular productive field that might provide methodological inspiration for SLA research in general. Firstly, Barron (Reference Barron2003) and Belz (Reference Belz2003) seem to be excellent examples of theoretically well-motivated investigations into specific pragmalinguistic aspects of learners' L2 use that were based on detailed, explicit coding systems. More importantly, we consider these studies to be seminal in their longitudinal character and their developmental focus: we believe that future research into the many blank spots on our research map of interlanguage pragmatics can and will be inspired by such studies. Secondly, the number and the quality of empiricial research on interlanguage pragmatics conducted from a socio-cultural perspective are impressive. As a particularly interesting methodological aspect, we have observed first attempts at ‘bridging the gap between psychological and sociocultural perspectives’ (Oxford & Schramm Reference Oxford, Schramm, Cohen and Macaro2007: 47, with reference to strategy research) in several of these studies. Future research inspired by such studies might try to further explore the promises that the combined investigation of interactional choices and psycholinguistic development seems to hold.
3. The individual learner
3.1 Strategies and learner autonomy
During the past years, language learning strategies and autonomy have attracted a fair amount of attention. This might well be related to a focus on autonomous language learning in the European context generally, and the influence of the Common European Framework of Reference (Council of Europe 2001) and, more specifically, the European Language Portfolio (http://www.coe.int/portfolio). Besides a number of practitioner's reports on attempts to foster autonomous learning, such as the comprehensive reflections on tandem learning provided in Brammerts & Kleppin (Reference Brammerts and Kleppin2005), several authors have conducted empirical investigations into questions of language learning strategies and autonomy. These range from studies on the overall use of strategies (that might be of interest to researchers outside the GFL field because they are comparable with similar studies in other languages) to detailed investigations of particular types of strategies (that might not be easily compared to similar studies, but might well inspire researchers outside the GFL field to replicate them in other languages). We will discuss intervention studies on language learning strategy such as, for example, Neuner-Anfindsen (2005), in part 2 of this article (section 4).
One of the studies on overall use of strategies is Chang's (Reference Chang2002) doctoral dissertation. To investigate the declarative metacognitive knowledge of 177 Taiwanese GFL learners at university level, Chang (Reference Chang2002) used a Chinese translation of the Strategy Inventory of Language Learning (SILL) developed by Oxford (Reference Oxford1990) on the basis of her strategy taxonomy. Chang (Reference Chang2002: 54) found social and compensatory strategies to be the most frequently used types of strategies, and metacognitive and memory strategies to be the least frequently used types of strategies. It is interesting to note that these findings differ from several other SILL studies (see White, Schramm & Chamot Reference White, Schramm, Chamot, Cohen and Macaro2007). At the 5% significance level, she found positive correlations of three variables with compensation strategies: age, learning time span, and travel to German-speaking countries. Her factor analysis corresponds only partly to the strategy taxonomy that is the basis for the SILL – a finding that is in opposition to the confirmatory factor analysis provided by Hsiao & Oxford (Reference Hsiao and Oxford2002).
Chan (Reference Chan, Barkowski and Funk2004) combined the use of questionnaires with preceding classroom observations and teacher interviews to inquire into the autonomy of Singapurian GFL students at secondary schools (N = 205). She found clues for a lack of reflection and for metacognitive deficits, for example the fact that 51% of students in Grade 7 were firmly convinced that they did not know any strategies at all as well as the fact that 40.8% of the students in Grade 7 said they had no special strategies (Chan Reference Chan, Barkowski and Funk2004: 112). She was alarmed at her finding that roughly 40–50% of students (varying in the two grade levels studied) said that they never planned their learning tasks and that they did not determine their learning goals. Her observation that more than 50% of students rated the language learning strategies being taught at school as ‘useful’ or ‘very useful’ but still less than 30% actually used them led Chan (Reference Chan, Barkowski and Funk2004: 113) to the conclusion that these students lacked the necessary metacognitive sensitivity.
Another strategy study based on questionnaires is the one by Klema (Reference Klema2006), who, in contrast to Chang (Reference Chang2002) and Chan (Reference Chan, Barkowski and Funk2004), focused on one particular strategy, namely the comparison of L3 German with L2 English. On the basis of Gellert's (Reference Gellert2003: 239) finding that Japanese and Korean teachers of GFL hardly use comparisons between English and German (and if so preferably either only briefly – to correct a mistake, with students majoring in English – or outside of class), she investigated the perspective of Japanese university students and found that these Japanese GFL learners nevertheless did compare English and German. Using her own questionnaire with 14 items developed for this purpose, she gathered ratings from students in six obligatory German classes at a Japanese university. Her findings were that these students perceived English and German as being very similar, and that they made a lot of comparisons between lexical and grammatical aspects of the two languages, but only few comparisons with regard to phonetic and orthographic aspects. She concluded that the participants in this study did not find that knowledge of English impeded the learning of German.
Strongly inspired by discourse analysis are the studies of Nsangou (Reference Nsangou2002), Esteve (Reference Esteve, Barkowski and Funk2004) and Kameyama (Reference Kameyama2004, Reference Kameyama, Ehlich and Hornung2006); they seem to be of particular methodological interest with regard to the question of how to relate strategy research to interaction analysis. Esteve (Reference Esteve, Barkowski and Funk2004) presented a discourse-analytic study with a transparent description of data coding. Her study, which she characterized as action research, pursued the question of which types of tasks foster metacognitive competence (consciousness-raising of executive skills as well as of cognitive strategies in peer interaction). Using videotapes and transcripts, Esteve documented the interaction in six groups of students in a class of beginning young adult learners. Her data revealed that these learners made use of a great number of metacognitive statements, that in their groups they were able to go beyond their individual linguistic competence by providing scaffolding to each other, that they displayed intense metalinguistic activity in the co-construction of new insights, and that shared communicative goals were the basis for their cooperation. Nsangou (Reference Nsangou2002) combined interactional data of conversations in German between students from Cameroon and from Germany with retrospective data to inquire into the communication problems caused by the use of the L2, and into the respective attempts at problem-solving. In his doctoral dissertation, Kameyama (Reference Kameyama2004) analyzed comparable problem-solving sequences from interactions between native and non-native speakers of German as well as between other groups. He used the theoretical framework of functional pragmatics (for an introduction, see Rehbein & Kameyama Reference Rehbein, Kameyama, Ammon, Dittmar, Mattheier and Trudgill2004) and therefore reconstructed the underlying, socially shared action pattern of comprehension-securing action from empirical transcribed data. His model details possible interactive steps as well as mental steps and decision points, and seems to be of particular theoretical interest to us because it is the first model we are aware of that goes beyond the mere listing and counting of specific strategies, but actually models the interplay, or functional coherence, of what other studies merely classify as instances of communication strategies.
Like Nsangou (Reference Nsangou2002) and Kameyama (Reference Kameyama2004), Colombo (Reference Colombo2005) also focused on communication strategies, but she based her approach less on a discourse-analytic perspective and instead relied more strongly on the psycholinguistic analysis of the learners' interlanguage. In her doctoral dissertation, she took a particularly close look at the various communication strategies that ten Italian learners of GFL at the university level used in written and oral production. Using Kasper's (Reference Kasper1982) classification of communication strategies as a starting point for the development of her own coding system, Colombo investigated into formal reductions, L1-, L2- and L3-based strategies, indirect requests for help and non-verbal communication strategies. Her analysis aimed not only at insights into the frequency distribution of the different types of communication strategies, but also at a comparison of strategy use in oral vs. written production where, in contradiction to her hypothesis, she found only minor differences. Her analysis is also interesting for its innovative attempt – albeit not quite convincing to the authors of this article – to develop psycholinguistically based strategy profiles of the learners.
A more encompassing approach to the concept of learner autonomy was provided by Schmelter (Reference Schmelter2004), who focused on tandem pairs of learners of German/French and German/English, and especially on the possibilities of language counseling for such tandem learners. His study was based on learner interviews, the observation and transcription of tandem sessions over several months, detailed learner comments on the observed tandem sessions, and the participants' written reflections on their tandem learning experience in their journals. Beyond a meticulous theoretical discussion of the ‘conceptual fog around the autonomy discussion’ (Schmelter Reference Schmelter2004: 549; translated from German), he was thus able to provide empirically-based insights into tandem learners' perspectives and decisions. He concluded, inter alia, that tandem learning cannot be conceptualized as self-directed learning per se, and suggested, instead, that, based on the subjective premises of the learners, tandem experiences can be instances of defensive or expansive learning (see Holzkamp Reference Holzkamp1995: 190–191). A related theoretical discussion of learner autonomy is provided by Schmenk (forthcoming). In her critical study of current conceptions of learner autonomy, Schmenk argues that autonomy is not automatically achieved through strategy use, and moreover, that such an equation may result in promoting trivialized interpretations of autonomy.
Three recent strategy studies (Biechele Reference Biechele, Barkowski and Funk2004; Heift Reference Heift2005; Schlak Reference Schlak2006) focused on language learning strategies in the particular context of learning with digital media. Biechele (Reference Biechele, Barkowski and Funk2004) studied future GFL teachers at a German university (N = 104) for whom German is partly an L1 and partly an L2. With regard to autonomy, she analyzed data on the media competency, media experiences, and desired integration of media into courses for future GFL teachers to make suggestions on how to foster media competency in future GFL teachers. In a media-focused strategy study, Heift (Reference Heift2005) documented that GFL university students reviewed learner reports for web-based language learning frequently, on average 33 times during the semester, and that 70% of them engaged in repeating exercises after these reviews. Schlak (Reference Schlak2006) conducted a multiple case study of four Japanese GFL adult learners who were also teachers of GFL in Japan; he focused on their language learning strategies with digital media. With three of the four participants, he found a particularly frequent use of memory-related strategies and considered the possibility that the frequent use of these strategies might be related to the participants' learning experiences during their literacy training as children. However, he emphasized the fact that, despite their homogenous cultural background, the participants displayed great individual differences in strategy use, and he concluded that culture does not determine learning behavior. He thus provided evidence contradicting a thought that implicitly runs through many questionnaire studies which compared perceived strategy use in different cultures, and, as Schlak (Reference Schlak2006: 27) pointed out, also mistakenly equate the notions of ‘nation’ and ‘culture’.
Our review of the studies on language learning strategies and learner autonomy with specific reference to L2 German leads us to the conclusion that, after thirty years of strategy research (see Cohen & Macaro Reference Cohen and Macaro2007), highly specific aspects of perceived and actual use of strategies – such as, in particular, use of communication strategies and use of strategies related to learning with digital media – are being investigated at a methodologically sophisticated level and are, for the most part, providing interesting insights. We nevertheless consider the theoretical progress in this field to be somewhat disappointing. This may partly be attributed to the fact that many of the studies reviewed here cannot be easily related to each other because diverse strategy taxonomies still abound. We perceive another problematic aspect, especially with regard to the more quantitatively oriented strategy studies, in the scarcity of theoretical modeling – or rather in the lack of theoretical conclusions drawn from diverging findings in such studies. We have therefore highlighted Kameyama's (Reference Kameyama2004, Reference Kameyama, Ehlich and Hornung2006) qualitatively oriented attempts at modeling communication strategies within an explicit theoretical framework as particularly convincing, and we would urge strategy researchers to develop their future research designs within more encompassing theoretical frameworks than in the past.
3.2 Motivation
Research on motivation has generally operated within an explorative-interpretive methodological framework (see Kleppin Reference Kleppin2001, Reference Kleppin2002 for an overview). The rather limited range of research designs resulting from such a focus has recently been considerably expanded by the development of a standardized instrument measuring British and German students' motivational profiles and proficiency in L2 German and L2 English during a period of study abroad (‘TESTATT: Tests and Attitude Scales for the Year Abroad’; Grotjahn Reference Grotjahn2004b; Raatz, Grotjahn & Wockenfuß Reference Raatz, Grotjahn, Wockenfuß and Grotjahn2006). Overall results show significant positive correlations between motivation on the one hand, and extroversion, L2 anxiety, L2 attitude, and L2 proficiency on the other (Grotjahn Reference Grotjahn2004b: 15). Both the motivation scores and the correlations, however, are much weaker for the L2 German learners. This may be read as evidence that firstly, individual or groups of students may benefit from study abroad to varying degrees; secondly, that speakers of L1 English may feel less motivated to learn an L2 than speakers of L1s other than English; and thirdly, that the construct of ‘motivation to learn an L2’ is not universal, but differs in its internal structure, contingent on, among other things, group-specific linguistic, educational, social and cultural contexts. In sum, the research project's main goal of developing an economic instrument measuring effects of study abroad has essentially been achieved. With respect to future developments, however, it would be promising to follow-up with a mixed-method study, completing the personality and proficiency measurements with student interview and self-report data in order to better explain and understand some of the statistical relationships.
Apart from the TESTATT project, the bulk of research on motivation in learning L2 German has mainly been concerned with what kind of motives students in different cultural and educational context bring to the classroom (Lochtman & Lutjeharms Reference Lochtman, Lutjeharms, Börner and Vogel2004; Fischer Reference Fischer2005; König Reference König2006; Küppers & Quetz Reference Küppers and Quetz2006; Lindemann Reference Lindemann2007), or how to motivate them in the classroom (Fremdsprache Deutsch, Special Issue 2003). More ambitious in terms of theory building has been Riemer's influential case study of three GFL students in a pre-sessional university course (Riemer Reference Riemer1997). Based on repeated interviews, learner diaries, and classroom observation, and supported by subsequent research (Riemer Reference Riemer, Küppers and Quetz2006), Riemer identifies the following construct components of motivation in instructed L2 learning, all of them supposed to being subject to intra- and inter-individual variation: general social set-up and individual dispositions, L2-specific attitudes, motives and goals, prior experience and assumed likelihood of success, instructional-educational context, and out-of-classroom L2 contacts (translated from German, cf. Riemer Reference Riemer, Küppers and Quetz2006: 37; see also Kirchner Reference Kirchner2004 for related research). Drawing on a recent development of Gardner's socio-educational model (Gardner Reference Gardner, Foster-Cohen, Medved Krajnovic and Mihaljević Djigunović2006) and Dörnyei's process approach to L2 motivation (Dörnyei Reference Dörnyei2000), Riemer (Reference Riemer, Küppers and Quetz2006: 44) proposes an SLA-specific and process-oriented model of motivation in L2 learning which details the interdependency of the before mentioned components. In line with social constructivist concepts of motivation (e.g., Williams & Burden Reference Williams and Burden1997), she suggests that as individuals interpret and react to external conditions in ways that are personal to them by acting on their internal dispositions, and as these actions are again subject to social and contextual influences, claims on more specific ways in which particular motivational components affect L2 learning cannot be made in general, but only with respect to individual learners (Riemer Reference Riemer, Küppers and Quetz2006: 37).
Overall, research on motivation in learning L2 German has contributed to the international debate by specifying some of the components and sub-components of the construct investigated, and by generating hypotheses and putting forward suggestions about the interrelatedness of these components. In doing so, this research succeeded in deepening our understanding of the internal structure of the construct, and has counterbalanced and enriched the (previously) predominantly quantitative and correlational research on L2 motivation. Nevertheless, any research that seeks to make claims about the potential impact of motivation on L2 achievement cannot rely on students' perceived and reported motivational dispositions and acquisitional gains alone, but has to integrate measurements of L2 proficiency as a dependent variable.
Such mixed-method research, however, might be unlikely to be initiated from within the German-speaking countries. Three reasons may account for this. First, there is a conspicuous lack of training in quantitative research methodology in applied linguistics and GFL, both at the graduate and the post-graduate levels. Second, though this is gradually changing, bidding for funding from private and governmental agencies which would enable large-scale research projects conducted by research teams is largely left to the personal agenda of individual researchers, rather than being an essential part of academic qualification and promotion. Third, as recently expressed and discussed by Riemer (Reference Riemer and Vollmer2007), the German research community is characterized by a prevalent disapproval of quantitative approaches to research on L2 learning. All of these three issues, we suggest, will have to be seriously addressed if the international endeavor of researching L2 development is to be furthermore inspired by research on L2 German from within the German-speaking countries.
3.3 Age
Empirical research on the role of age in learning L2 German is relatively recent (see Grotjahn Reference Grotjahn2003 and Molnár & Schlak Reference Molnár and Schlak2005 for research overviews). There are, however, some highly inspiring studies with a potential to move this field of inquiry forward.
Both Moyer (Reference Moyer1999, Reference Moyer2004b) and Aguado, Grotjahn & Schlak (Reference Aguado, Grotjahn and Schlak2005, forthcoming) investigate age against learners' ultimate attainment in terms of the intelligibility of oral L2 performance. The ambitious mixed-method study of Aguado et al. (forthcoming) is currently being piloted in Germany and involves speakers of structurally distant L1s (besides English, also Arabic, Polish, Spanish and Turkish). This project is innovative insofar as it combines the statistical analysis of rating scores – native speakers, extremely high-achieving non-native speakers, and advanced non-native speakers completing a series of speaking/reading tasks and being rated on their oral performance by trained and untrained native speakers of German – with an explanative analysis of ‘deep’ and subject-specific learner data. This second part of the project includes (i) performance tasks capturing subject-specific learning difficulties, (ii) interviews establishing individual l2 learning profiles, and (iii), aptitude-related measurements.
Moyer (Reference Moyer1999, Reference Moyer2004b) focuses on phonological performance features of US American learners, and integrates the individual learning profiles of her participants. Including the variables ‘professional motivation’ and ‘type of phonetic feedback’ (segmental vs. segmental and supra-segmental) in her regression analysis, she shows that the factor ‘age’ does not contribute significantly to the explanation of variance (Moyer Reference Moyer1999). In a theoretically highly informed and methodologically sound follow-up study (Moyer Reference Moyer2004b), Moyer includes the quantity and type of L2 instruction as well as further psychological and social variables including contact with L2 native speakers, self-efficacy, and satisfaction with one's own L2 attainment. Based on her results Moyer (Reference Moyer2004b: 140ff.) suggests that the effect of the factor ‘age’ is largely overestimated when investigated in isolation. What also transpires from Moyer's research are some methodological and conceptual limitations of previous research on ultimate attainment (see Long Reference Long2005 for a review). ‘Length of residence’ (LOR), for example, traditionally one of the core measurements, does not reveal anything about the quality of experienced input and interaction. Similarly, ‘age of onset’ (AO) may well cover other, possibly equally relevant socio-psychological factors such as attitudes toward the L2, the L2 culture, and L2 instruction. In her study on L2 German as well as in subsequent research on L2 English (Moyer Reference Moyer2007), LOR and AO do correlate with phonological attainment. More interesting, however, is the fact that out of a cohort of learners with similarly extensive LOR and early AO, only two attain native-like performance, and only these two consistently report extreme positive orientations toward the target language and culture. Thus, Moyer (Reference Moyer2007: 514; original emphasis) concludes that ‘L2 experience is partly constructed as a response to one's intentions toward the language’. Such evidence, however preliminary, supports the hypothesis that maturation constraints previously associated with neurobiological changes ‘are more affective than neurocognitive in nature, as these appear to be fundamentally linked’ (Moyer Reference Moyer2007: 503; see also Pagonis, forthcoming, for an extensive discussion of this issue).
Such a view on the age factor in L2 development is in stark contrast to the essentially cognitive perspectives on SLA put forward by Dimroth (Dimroth Reference Dimroth2008; see also Dimroth & Haberzettl, forthcoming). Notwithstanding a general rejection of other than end-state data in much research on the age factor in SLA, Dimroth analyses longitudinal L2 oral production data with respect to core grammar (negation, finiteness). Her participants were two young (age 8 and 14 years) untutored Russian beginners acquiring L2 German upon arrival in Germany. Given the scarcity of comparable research, and the limited number of subjects in her own study, Dimroth is cautious to draw more general conclusions. However, as the acquisitional sequences of the adolescent participant resembled more that of published accounts of untutored adult L2 acquisition as did the developmental patterns of the child participant, Dimroth suggests that her data ‘speak against the view that child L2 acquisition is like adult L2 acquisition’ (Dimroth Reference Dimroth2008: 147). Given its purely cognitive view on L2 development, the study does not account for context and interaction. It is therefore hard to tell whether the differing developmental sequences reflect cognitive maturation alone, or are simultaneously reflections of varying input conditions at school (more holistically-oriented primary vs. more academically-oriented secondary school), interactional affordances outside school (differing interactional patterns in child vs. adolescent interaction with peers and adults), and differing learner agencies (individual learning goals as an internalisation of external age-specific assumptions as to what counts as acceptable L2 use).
Overall, we suggest three implications for SLA research that seeks to inform L2 pedagogy, the first being methodological, the second pedagogic, and the third conceptual.
First, we suggest that the isolated investigation of the age factor in instructed L2 development is unpromising and potentially misleading. Language learning is a life-long process (and thus talking of ‘long-term’ instead of ‘ultimate’ attainment may be more appropriate), and as such is highly regulated by self-attributions, the assigned functional and symbolic relevance of the L2, and prior learning experience as well as future proficiency goals. Therefore, we suggest, it is indispensable to integrate further cognitive, psychological, social, and pedagogical variables into the research design, and combine psychometric measurements with qualitative data that accounts for individual experience of contextualized L2 use and L2 learning.
Second, such an integrative view on age in L2 development does not lend itself to an all-purpose ‘the earlier the better’ L2 pedagogy, but rather suggests ‘to adapt programs very thoroughly to the age of the learner’ (DeKeyser & Larson-Hall Reference DeKeyser, Larson-Hall, Kroll and de Groot2005: 101). Certainly true in its generality, such a statement raises further questions on curriculum development and course design which are neither addressed, nor could be answered by experimental research.
Third, we would like to express serious concerns with the concept of the native speaker/non-native speaker divide in this kind of research. Still rare, there are now some (L2 English) studies that have included non-native judgements, and these studies show that native and non-native listeners use different parameters to make performance judgments (e.g., Field Reference Field2005; Riney, Takagi & Inutsuka Reference Riney, Takagi and Inutsuka2005). Notwithstanding claims being made that ‘ultimate’ is not to be understood as equivalent to ‘nativelikeness’ (Birdsong & Paik Reference Birdsong, Paik, Spolsky and Hult2008: 424), it is clear that relying on judgements of (often monolingual) native-speakers reflects a subscription to what has been called the ‘native speaker model’ in applied linguistics. Of course, the role and status of the German native speaker might be quite different from the case of English, which already is frequently, and soon will be mostly, used in non-native-speaker–non-native-speaker interactions. Nevertheless, we consider it good research praxis to explicate ideologically loaded research constructs such as ‘ultimate attainment’, and construct operationalizations such as ‘native-speaker judgements’, with respect to their underlying conceptual assumptions and suppositions (see part 2 of the article, section 5, on methodology, epistemology, and ethics).
Apart from its role in ultimate attainment, and fuelled by the European Union's objective of multilingualism for European citizens (see Kommission der Europäischen Gemeinschaften 2005), in the German-speaking countries ‘age’ has been investigated in terms of learning a language other than the home language at kindergarten or primary school. Besides suggestions for school projects and curricula designed for accommodating immigrant minority children and youth (Krumm Reference Krumm2002; Hinrichs Reference Hinrichs2003; Hölscher & Piepho Reference Hölscher and Piepho2003; Rösch Reference Rösch and Ahrenholz2007), the acquisitional basis of early L2 learning has been investigated empirically (Peltzer-Karpf et al. Reference Peltzer-Karpf, Griessler, Wurnig, Schwab, Piwonka, Akkus, Lederwasch, Brizic and Blazevic2006; Grießhaber Reference Grießhaber and Ahrenholz2007; Tracy Reference Tracy and Ahrenholz2007) and has informed the diagnosis of the linguistic abilities of children and youth (both in their heritage language and in L2 German) from ethnolinguistic minorities (Gogolin et al. Reference Gogolin, Neumann and Roth2005; Reich, Roth & Neumann Reference Reich, Roth and Neumann2007). In Germany, most federal states have now introduced language diagnosis and language support programs for immigrant minority children at pre-school level, including some research guiding and informing these programs (e.g., Förderung von Kindern und Jugendlichen mit Migrationshintergrund (FörMig) / Support for immigrant minority children and youth; www.blk-foermig.uni-hamburg.de, and the ‘MIKI’ research project; www.uni-bielefeld.de/lili/studium/faecher/daf/miki/index.html).
Finally, besides early age L2 development, studies have been concerned with the L2 use and learning of senior speakers, i.e., people that have not been in an instructed or natural L2 environment for a long time, and are now learning L2 German, either by choice or by necessity, due to factors such as migration (Thimm Reference Thimm2000). Whereas Häcki Buhofer (Reference Häcki Buhofer2003) reports on the acquisition of specific proficiency components at different ages, Berndt (Reference Berndt2003) suggests a range of pedagogical principles that account for the specific cognitive, affective and motivational specifics of older learners of L2 German. In view of rapid socio-economic changes, increased voluntary and forced migration, and the reality of ‘lifelong learning’, we expect the issues of teaching L2 German to senior learners and to members of ethnolinguistic minorities to become increasingly prominent.
This first part of the article has looked at studies on language development and on the individual learner. The second part (in Language Teaching 43.1, 2010) will focus on language pedagogy. The studies surveyed there have not just made use of face-to-face or virtual environments that are created for accelerated L2 learning for the purpose of data collection, but are essentially concerned with the impact of contextual factors and pedagogical choices on learning conditions, learning processes, and learning outcomes.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the four anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive feedback as well as our colleagues throughout the world who have provided us with manuscripts and off-prints of their publications which were not or not yet readily available. Additional thanks go to Ditte Buchwald, Anne Gadow, Anja Heintze, and Susan Wagner for their assistance with the bibliographical research for this article.
Johannes Eckerth is Senior Lecturer at King's College London. Prior to this position, he has taught and conducted research on L2 German and L2 English at Applied Linguistics departments in The Netherlands, Germany, Turkey and the USA. His research interests focus on interfaces between SLA research and L2 pedagogy. He has widely published on SLA and L2 classroom interaction and has recently co-edited (with Sabine Siekmann) a volume entitled Task-based language learning and teaching: Theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical perspectives (Peter Lang, 2008).
Karen Schramm is Professor of German as a Foreign Language at the Herder Institute of the University of Leipzig. She has taught at Korea University in Seoul, the American University in Washington, DC, and the University of Maryland. She has published widely on L2 reading, language learning strategies, and interaction in the language classroom. Currently, she investigates story-telling in L2 German in the elementary school classroom.
Erwin Tschirner is Professor of German as a Foreign Language and Applied Linguistics at the Herder Institute of the University of Leipzig and Adjunct Professor of German Studies at the University of Arizona. He is an internationally recognized authority on foreign language learning, methodology, testing, and materials design, and has taught in universities in the United States, Argentina, Cuba, and Germany. He has lectured and consulted in North and South America, Europe, East and South East Asia, Australia and the Middle East, and has been a tester and tester trainer for the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview since 1989 and 1993, respectively.
