1.1 Focus on classroom interaction

Within German-speaking countries, the second language acquisition-oriented (SLA-oriented) analysis of L2 German classroom interaction has been inspired and moved forward by Henrici's (Reference Henrici1995: 34ff.) interpretation of international L2 classroom research as well as by his suggestion of an ‘SLA-specific discourse analysis’. Within this multi-methodological framework, tools of linguistic discourse analysis (e.g. Renkema Reference Renkema2004) are combined with ethnographic methods such as stimulated recall, questionnaires and analyses of teaching/learning material. Investigating in what way interaction is conducive to SLA, these studies aim for the ‘reconstruction of teaching/learning processes with the purpose of discovering critical incidents involved in language acquisition’ (Henrici Reference Henrici1995: 35; throughout the paper, all translations into English were carried out by the authors). Overall, SLA-oriented investigations of L2 German classroom discourse have contributed to research on instructed language learning mainly in the domains of oral error correction and teacher talk.

As error correction reflects teachers’ implicit or explicit assumptions on L2 knowledge and L2 learning, teachers’ oral corrective feedback directly links pedagogical techniques to acquisitional processes. In addition to studies using preference and attitude questionnaires (Demme Reference Demme2001, Schulz Reference Schulz2001), Hamilton's (Reference Hamilton, Boxer and Cohen2004) discourse-based study compares the use of L2 German by American teenagers in and outside the classroom during a residential summer immersion program. Working within an ethnomethodological framework, Hamilton shows in what ways teachers’ and learners’ preferences for self-initiated and other-initiated repair are contingent on the kind of communicative difficulty and on the different contexts-of-talk.

With respect to the effectiveness of oral corrective feedback, i.e. its implications for interlanguage development, at least three key issues come to mind. First, whether a learner is aware of having been corrected, second, whether the correction is followed-up by a verbal reaction by the learner, and third, whether the accurate use of the corrected L2 feature increases subsequent to the correction.

Whereas the first question has not been addressed in research on L2 German, Blex (Reference Blex and Eckerth2003) has pursued the second issue. Adopting students’ verbal uptake of a previous correction as an operational criterion for short-term acquisition, Blex (Reference Blex and Eckerth2003) shows in what way the variables ‘type of error’, ‘type of correction’ and ‘time of correction’ interact and affect verbal uptake in a complex way. Except for the work of Lochtman (Reference Lochtman2002), who investigated the relationship between teachers’ preferred correction mode with students’ subsequent mastery of the German plural system in a grammar exercise, we are not aware of any L2 German studies that have used achievement tests in relation to oral error correction. Such a lack of (quasi-) experimental research on L2 German in Germany is deeply interwoven with the country's academic and intellectual tradition. In particular, the last 25 years of ‘test aversion’ (Roth Reference Roth, Bainski and Krüger-Potratz2008) in language pedagogy, and the research community's prevalent disapproval of quantitative approaches to research on L2 learning (Riemer Reference Riemer and Vollmer2007a) may impede the development of measures of L2 proficiency and/or achievement for research on classroom interaction.

L2 classroom discourse as teacher talk has been investigated outside German-speaking countries in terms of its amount, type and pedagogical function as well as its L1/L2 distribution. Using a coding scheme and adopting a functional perspective, Kim & Elder (Reference Kim and Elder2005) investigate the classroom talk of native speaker teachers across different foreign language classrooms (L2 German, among others) in New Zealand. The authors show teachers’ tendency to use the L1 for more complex interactions, thereby severely limiting the potential for intake and ‘real’ (as opposed to ‘display’) communication. Interestingly, this could not be explained in terms of teachers’ limited L2 proficiency, but was rather due to their eagerness to avoid communicative difficulties and to ‘keep the ball rolling’, both reinforced by the availability and omnipresence of the L1. In our reading of this study, the participant teachers’ focus on pedagogical performance clearly limited students’ chances of developing their communicative competence.

In a related investigation of the classroom-language use of three non-native teachers in a L2 German program at a US university, Chavez (Reference Chavez2006) triangulates a detailed quantitative analysis of classroom talk, teacher interviews and students’ written course evaluations. Besides the reported enormous variation across teachers and lessons – e.g. teachers’ L2-to-L1 ratio varying between roughly 12:1 and 2:1 (Chavez Reference Chavez2006: 93) – Chavez shows how teachers’ self-perceptions of their professional roles and their pedagogical beliefs impact on their classroom-language use. Pursuing this promising line of inquiry, future research will have to explore (i) whether researcher-construed observational and analytical categories have perceptual reality for students and teachers, (ii) which teacher-external factors (e.g. teaching experience, teacher training, program specifications) and teacher-internal variables (e.g. self-perceived or other-assigned professional status, personality) mediate between pedagogical beliefs and linguistic practices, and finally (iii) how this linguistic behavior relates to students’ L2 development in communicative and collaborative learning/teaching environments.

1.2 Focus on collaborative learning/teaching environments

In addition to research on teacher–student interaction, there is now a large body of research investigating the interactional characteristics and acquisitional potential of collaborative and task-based peer interaction. Similar to earlier approaches to L2 teaching, task-based language teaching (TBLT) claims that SLA theory connects task-based teaching to task-based learning, thus providing a conceptual link between SLA theory and L2 pedagogy (Eckerth & Edmondson, in press). Within German-speaking countries, the concept of ‘task’ as a building block in curriculum design is increasingly gaining momentum (Bausch, Burwitz-Melzer, Königs & Krumm Reference Bausch, Burwitz-Melzer, Königs and Krumm2006; Müller-Hartmann & Schocker-v. Ditfurth Reference Müller Hartmann and Ditfurth2008). Task-based research on L2 German has largely contributed to the thriving field of TBLT in at least three ways.

First, task-based research on L2 German has argued strongly for the consideration of learner agency and task adaptation (Börner Reference Börner2004, Eckerth Reference Eckerth2009). These studies have demonstrated the likeliness, frequency and functional structure of interactional adjustments in students’ peer interactions (Nsangou Reference Nsangou2002; Hardy & Moore Reference Hardy and Moore2004), and have brought to the fore the concept of the learner as an active social agent and task interpreter rather than merely a task performer. They emphasize the dynamic interaction between the task and the learner, showing how learners’ cognitive and affective dispositions constitute potentially relevant variables that may have a bearing on learners’ peer interactions (Kreuzig & Zervaki Reference Kreuzig and Zervaki2007) and on resulting learning outcomes (Eckerth Reference Eckerth2008).

Second, research on L2 German has contributed to our understanding of the teacher's role in task-based instruction. Notwithstanding learner-based variation, peer interactions share classroom-specific similarities due to models and norms of ‘good’ language use enacted and enforced by individual teachers during whole-classroom activities. Chavez, for instance, identifies the teacher as a ‘shadow participant in peer interaction’ (Chavez Reference Chavez2007: 161), establishing scripts of classroom-language use that impact on learners’ task interpretation and learner-language use during peer interaction. Chavez (Reference Chavez2007: 184) concludes:

Third, research on L2 German has scrutinized task design and task implementation in a pedagogical and action-research perspective (Driessen, Westhoff, Haenen & Brekelmans Reference Driessen, Westhoff, Haenen and Brekelmans2008). Schart (Reference Schart2008) explores the role of task design, the individual teacher and the institutionalized pedagogic environment during the implementation of a task-based L2 German syllabus at a Japanese university. Adopting a teacher-researcher perspective in the exploration of his own teaching, Schart provides a rich account of the various factors that are involved in the transition to a task-based syllabus. What transpires from Schart's study is the presumption that one major factor in the successful implementation process appears to be teachers’ early and ongoing active involvement and engagement, thus increasing their familiarity with and decreasing their potential alienation from the newly introduced curricular elements. In-depth analyses of teachers’ assumptions of, beliefs about, and practices within TBLT have the potential to further enlighten teachers’ perception of TBLT, and to stimulate teacher-led action-research approaches to task-based instruction (see Andon & Eckerth, in press, for L2 English).

Research on TBLT, as vital and thriving as it is, has not been without criticism. Based on evidence from conversation analysis (CA), TBLT has been criticized for lacking methodological rigour in the analysis of task-based interactions (Seedhouse Reference Seedhouse2005). Applying a CA framework to ‘conversations-for-learning’ between US American-based students of L2 German and native-language tutors, Kasper (Reference Kasper2004) strongly argues for the learning potential of language activities that are far less pre-structured than tasks. She demonstrates how the interaction ‘evolves in cycles of recurrent orientations to the interaction as conversation or as language learning event with a metalinguistic focus’ (Kasper Reference Kasper2004: 562). This study, the author concludes, ‘documents in detail how a very badly defined task was transformed into a complex hybrid activity by the co-participants’ (ibid.: 564) and, more generally, that what has become known as ‘CA for SLA’, ‘offers an epistemological stance and analytical method to identify the affordances . . . of different kinds of talk-in-interaction for second and foreign language learning’ (ibid.: 564, original emphasis).

In our view, findings from research on learner agency, teachers’ shadow participation in peer interaction, and CA-informed perspectives on affordances during talk-in-interactions, are not inconsistent with one of the central assumptions in task-based research, namely that the use of specific tasks enables teachers and researchers to partially channel learners’ attentional resources and discourse practices. However, and not limited to the field of L2 German, these findings do call for more integrative research that systematically ties together the complex interdependency of task characteristics as part of collaborative learning/teaching environments, teachers’ mediation of and learners’ appraisal of these characteristics, learners’ cognitive and motivational involvement in and engagement with the task, and learning outcomes.

1.3 Focus on specific language skills

From a psycholinguistic point of view, the acquisition and development of language skills have been investigated as cognitive (and, to a lesser extent, motivational and affective) processes that are activated by using the L2 receptively or productively. More recently, this framework has been seriously challenged by studies which emphasize the role and significance of social and contextual factors in language use. In the following, we will review research on L2 German that conceptualizes skills as cognitive processes and as situated practice, respectively.

1.4 Focus on specific proficiency components

1.5 Study abroad

In general, studies on the effects of study abroad (SA) have yielded mixed results (e.g. Collentine & Freed Reference Collentine and Freed2004). This is also the case with studies focusing on German. Major points of interest in this regard have been the effects of various background variables on the linguistic gains of SA, the impact of SA on specific language skills, the intersection of language and culture in SA, and policy-related issues.

The most ambitious and long ranging L2 German study of the last eight years was conducted by Rees & Klapper (Reference Rees and Klapper2007). Their participants were British students of German who spend between six and twelve months studying in Germany and who were followed over a period of four years. Although Rees & Klapper's range of language proficiency measures, a C-test and a grammar test, may be limited, their findings are very interesting. Whereas no statistically significant effects of gender, A-level grades, IQ scores, and previous residence abroad periods were found, participants made considerable progress in language proficiency. Furthermore, and although students instructed within a four-skills communicative approach had much lower pre-SA scores than those instructed within a grammar-translation approach, post-SA scores were similar for both groups. With respect to the acquisition of both explicit and implicit grammatical knowledge, the authors conclude that students coming from communicative classrooms reach the same levels of grammatical proficiency as students coming from focus-on-forms classrooms.

Apart from implicit and explicit grammatical knowledge, SA studies have addressed the development of oral proficiency and the nature of the host country language program. Tschirner (Reference Tschirner2007) looked at both in relationship to each other and found that even an SA program as short as four weeks may lead to remarkable improvements in oral proficiency as measured by the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview when learners are highly motivated, the program is clearly and unequivocally focused on developing oral proficiency, and there is a structured and well-fleshed out extracurricular program that requires students to interact with native speakers frequently on a regular basis.

The majority of studies focusing on the acquisition of German within SA contexts are concerned with the intersection between language and culture. Barron (Reference Barron2003, Reference Barron2007), for instance, looked at the acquisition of pragmatic and sociolinguistic competence. She followed 33 Irish learners of German who were studying for 10 months in Germany in their ability to use the speech act types of requests, offers, and refusals adequately. While the L2 pragmatic competence of these students did improve over time, particularly in discourse structure and increased use of routinized formulas as well as of internal modifiers, it remained below that of German native-speaker norms. In general, there was a clear relationship between the acquisition of pragmatic competence and the length of the SA period (Barron Reference Barron2003).

Additional studies focusing on culture learning in SA in the broadest sense investigated how a group of American undergraduate students defined, experienced and perceived self-identified cultural encounters in a five-week SA period (Brubaker Reference Brubaker2007), how socio-cultural theory and language socialization research can inform the design and interpretation of studies investigating the development of pragmatic ability (Kinginger & Belz Reference Kinginger and Belz2005), and how literary works concerned with contact situations between foreigners and natives may be used to heighten SA students’ cultural awareness and to help them manage culture shock by readjusting expectations (Einbeck Reference Einbeck2002).

In a policy-related study, Parey & Waldinger (Reference Parey and Waldinger2007) were interested in the relationship between studying abroad and the likelihood that SA students would accept jobs outside their own country after graduation. Their analysis is based on four cohorts of a nationally representative longitudinal sample of university graduates in Germany, all in all some 30,000 former students who were surveyed twice, the first time about twelve months after graduation, the second time five years after graduation. They found that studying abroad in one's undergraduate studies increases the probability of working abroad later significantly by around 15 to 20 percentage points. The study also points to the success of the European ERASMUS program which has both significantly increased the probability of studying abroad as well as been very effective in labour market mobility within Europe. In addition, they found that study abroad location choices are ‘sticky’, i.e. they are preferred locations for graduates accepting jobs outside of Germany after graduation.

1.6 E-learning

Judged purely by their graphic appearance, much has changed since the early ground-breaking development of a self-instructional L2 Russian course in the Stanford project (Van Campen Reference Van Campen and Suppes1968). However, as Heift states, ‘in 2006, while the user interface has become much fancier, the pedagogy has still not caught up’ (Heift Reference Heift2006: 256). In order to establish a pedagogy-led technology rather than a technology-led pedagogy, the underlying pedagogical principles, the degree of learners’ choices and involvement in the teaching-learning process, the quality of feedback, and the extent of interactivity of the medium are still critical and controversial issues (Rösler Reference Rösler2004, Rösler & Tschirner Reference Rösler and Tschirner2005, Gibbs & Gosper Reference Gibbs and Gosper2006, Witte Reference Witte2007).

Proponents of e-learning have suggested that it can be conducive to L2 learning in four key ways. First, it gives learners access to non-contrived L2 material (the authenticity argument). Second, it empowers the learners to adapt their L2 learning to their individual learning preferences (the autonomy argument). Third, it facilitates communication with native speakers of the L2 (the communication argument). Fourth, it enhances the collaboration between learners of the L2 (the collaboration argument).

1.7 Assessment

Until recently, the evaluation of L2 skills and competencies with standardized instruments as is common in countries like the USA or The Netherlands has not played a major role in German-speaking countries. However, given the developments within the European Union and the ever-increasing work-related mobility of its citizens, the need for a transparent and comparable evaluation of L2 skills has become more urgent. Informed by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR; see Little Reference Little2006) and the European Language Portfolio (ELP; Council of Europe 2001; see also Reuter-Helbig Reference Reuter-Helbig2004; Schneider Reference Schneider, Krumm and Portmann-Tselikas2006; Bärenfänger Reference Bärenfänger2007), the discussion regarding the assessment of L2 German has revolved around the development and implementation of ‘TestDaF’, the development of an L2 German C-test, the development of an L2 German ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview, and the linguistic diagnosis of kindergarten children and school beginners with L2 German.

Research on TestDaF (Test Deutsch als Fremdsprache/Test of German as a Foreign Language), a standardized test designed to assess general and academic language proficiency, includes the investigation of test goodness criteria (validity, reliability, etc.) as well as research on the comparison of TestDaF with its predecessor, the DSH (Deutsche Sprachprüfung für den Hochschulzugang/German University Admission Language Test; see Burghoff Reference Burghoff2006 for DSH guidelines), a non-standardized test based on test specifications. As these specifications produce varying test contents and test difficulties across different agencies using the test, the validity of experimental comparisons between TestDaF and DSH is somewhat limited (see Alderson Reference Alderson2002; Koreik Reference Koreik and Koreik2005). However, as the authors of the comparison studies point out, apart from its restricted empirical validity, the comparability studies have been instrumental not only in the readjustment of the TestDaF proficiency benchmarks for university admission, but also by objectifying the rather heated controversy sparked off by the worldwide introduction of TestDaF (see Casper-Hehne & Koreik Reference Casper-Hehne and Koreik2004; Koreik Reference Koreik and Koreik2005).

The proficiency levels of the TestDaF are based on can-do statements and have been mapped onto the skill levels of the CEFR (Kniffka & Rissom Reference Kniffka, Rissom, Wolff and Lange2002) and the Association of Language Testers in Europe (ALTE). Extensive validation research has shown satisfactory consistency in rating the subskills (Bärenfänger & Keckler Reference Bärenfänger and Keckler2004; Eckes Reference Eckes2005; Arras Reference Arras2007; Eckes Reference Eckes2008), and a longitudinal study on the prospective validity of the test is currently under way at the TestDaF Institute (TestDaF Institute, personal communication). Finally, as the assessment of grammatical knowledge is integrated in the assessment of productive language skills (Krekeler Reference Krekeler2005), such an integrated assessment of grammatical knowledge could have a potentially positive washback effect on the teaching of L2 German in countries where grammar-centered syllabi prevail, although potential test takers and test users may initially be reluctant in giving up grammar-oriented learning and teaching in test preparatory courses (see Oebel Reference Oebel2005 for Japan).

C-tests (see Grotjahn, forthcoming, and http://www.c-test.de for an up-to-date electronic bibliography) for L2 German have been used for the calibration of TestDaF items. Inter alia, it was shown that a carefully developed C-test can reach high degrees of reliability (Eckes & Grotjahn Reference Eckes, Grotjahn and Grotjahn2006). Furthermore, the C-tests used in this study correlated substantially with the reading and writing parts of the TestDaF. Future studies will have to show whether C-tests can also be used as an efficient and, compared to the TestDaF writing subtest, more economical means for screening students’ writing ability. Most interestingly, however, test comparisons also showed a high correlation between the C-test scores and the oral proficiency as measured by the TestDaF's cassette-based Simulated Oral Proficiency Interview (SOPI) – a new finding in research on the C-test.

In contrast to the SOPI-based assessment of oral proficiency used in the TestDaF, the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) relies on audio-taped face-to-face interviews (Breiner-Sanders, Lowe, Miles & Swender Reference Breiner-Sanders, Lowe, Miles and Swender2000; Tschirner Reference Tschirner2001; Lindseth Reference Lindseth2005). Since the mid-1990s, the ACTFL OPI has become the most widely used test of oral proficiency in an L2 other than English at US colleges and universities (Liskin-Gasparro Reference Liskin-Gasparro2003) and has recently been related to the CEFR proficiency scales (Tschirner Reference Tschirner2005, Reference Tschirner2008). Undoubtedly due to the intensive training prospective raters have to undergo, interrater reliability in recent large-scale research has presented high reliability coefficients across 19 different languages (Surface & Dierdorff Reference Surface and Dierdorff2003). Further research, we suggest, will have to address rater behaviour, explicating the native speaker benchmark criterion, and exploring the claimed positive washback effect of the ACTFL OPI (Chalboub-Deville & Fulcher Reference Chalboub-Deville and Fulcher2003).

The diagnosis of oral linguistic abilities of kindergarten and elementary school children in Germany has for a long time been discredited as promoting competitiveness and selection at an early age. In fact, until the end of the 1990s, general and L2 pedagogy have been characterized by a ‘test abstinence’ and even ‘test aversion’ (see Roth Reference Roth, Bainski and Krüger-Potratz2008: 22). However, there is now a consensus that students in elementary and secondary schools in Germany often do not reach the required levels of linguistic competence, with such a lack of achievement being detrimental to their overall school performance. Current efforts and research activities revolve around the psycholinguistic (e.g. Peltzer-Karpf et al. Reference Peltzer-Karpf, Griessler, Wurnig, Schwab, Piwonka, Akkus, Lederwasch, Brizic and Blazevic2006) and sociolinguistic (Brizić Reference Brizić2006) investigations of L1 and L2 development of immigrant minority children and youth, and the diagnosis of their oral linguistic abilities at school and pre-school level (see Gogolin, Neumann & Roth Reference Gogolin, Neumann and Roth2005; Ahrenholz Reference Ahrenholz2008 for Germany and Krumm Reference Krumm2005a for Austria).

As this trend towards extensive linguistic diagnosis is unprecedented in the language policy of German-speaking countries, there is a controversial debate with respect to both its political dimension and its research basis. At present, many of the instruments used to make decisions on specific L1 and L2 language support measures of school beginners are ‘not sufficiently founded in linguistic theory, and are hardly or not at all test-theoretically validated’ (Fried Reference Fried2004: 48; translated from German; see also Ehlich Reference Ehlich2005; Schnieders & Konor Reference Schnieders and Konor2005; Roth Reference Roth, Bainski and Krüger-Potratz2008 for a critical review). In a similar vein, such tests have been criticized for operating with statistical figures that are based on monolingual German populations (Reich Reference Reich2005), thus not only revealing a lack of empirical foundations but also a conceptual monolingual habitus prevailing in language policy in spite of a de-facto multilingual situation.

Apart from the adaptation of the C-test for the diagnosis of L2 German at primary and secondary school level (Baur & Spettmann Reference Baur, Spettmann and Ahrenholz2007), promising developments are profile analyses such as HAVAS 5 (Hamburger Verfahren zur Analyse des Sprachstands von Fünfjährigen/Hamburg Procedure for the Analysis of Language Proficiency of Five-year-old Children; Bosselmann Reference Bosselmann, Bartnitzky and Speck-Hamdan2005; Reich & Roth Reference Reich, Roth, Reich, Roth and Neumann2007; Roth Reference Roth, Bainski and Krüger-Potratz2008), which are explicitly anchored in theories of children's linguistic and cognitive development, use validated multiple scales for linguistic profiling which all load on one factor and are based on standardized procedures of test administration and analysis. Furthermore, such procedures preferably have been developed with regard to the diagnosis and analysis of individuals’ needs for language support in the heritage language (Turkish, Russian, Polish, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese in the case of HAVAS 5) and the additional language German (but see Grieshaber 2006 for a critical take on profile analyses, and Apeltauer Reference Apeltauer2004 for the suggestion of observational assessment).

In sum, the research reported above reflects the recent spread of test-based approaches to educational and social issues in Germany and the German-speaking countries. Tests have been applied to the diagnosis of linguistic abilities at an early age (Roth Reference Roth, Bainski and Krüger-Potratz2008), the admission of international students (TestDaF), the naturalization of migrants (Rübeling Reference Rübeling2003; Laversuch Reference Laversuch2008), and to Aussiedler (i.e. ethnic German emigrants from the former Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries; Stölting Reference Stölting and Reitemeier2003; Struck-Soboleva Reference Struck-Soboleva2006; Schüpbach Reference Schüpbach2009). Given this development, a discussion of the social impact and the ethical dimension of language testing will be imperative.

2.1 Methodology, epistemology, and ethics

Methodology (decisions about best ways of producing evidence), epistemology (agreed-upon notions on the nature of what can be captured and what counts as evidence), and ethics (agreed-upon valuations of what is worth pursuing and understanding) are necessarily interrelated and intertwined (Ortega Reference Ortega2005). Nevertheless, and for the sake of analytical clarity, we will discuss these three notions separately.

In German-speaking countries, research on L2 learning and teaching resonated with the establishment of the scientific discipline named Sprachlehrforschung (an abbreviation for Sprachlehr- und -lernforschung/‘research on language teaching and language learning’; see Grotjahn Reference Grotjahn and Byram2000; Edmondson Reference Edmondson and Eckerth2003; Königs Reference Königs2004), institutionalized as an academic subject matter at two German universities in the mid-1970s. The research approach of Sprachlehrforschung has been characterized as

Such a framework resonates with the current call in the international research community for socially contextualized and socio-cognitive (Batstone, in press) approaches to SLA research. Furthermore, the prominence which has been assigned to the learning–teaching relationship has also entailed an orientation towards qualitative research methods of many research projects with allegiance to the concept of Sprachlehrforschung. Among others, one innovative trend has been the development of introspective methods for research on the mental processes and subjective theories involved in L2 learning and teaching (Aguado Reference Aguado2004; Beyer Reference Beyer2005; Heine & Schramm Reference Heine, Schramm and Vollmer2007); another has been methodological inquiries into the potential and the limitations of empirical and theoretical triangulation (e.g. Grotjahn Reference Grotjahn, Scherfer and Wolff2006; Riemer Reference Riemer and Vollmer2007a; Aguado Reference Aguado2009). In this regard, research on L2 German has substantially contributed to the growing methodological awareness and sophistication in the field of L2 learning and teaching research. Unfortunately, the bulk of research conducted within German-speaking countries is published exclusively in German and may, therefore, be inaccessible to much of the international community.

The relative reluctance of some scholars based in German-speaking countries to publish in international journals may be due to their intention of strengthening the role of German as a language of scientific communication (Ammon Reference Ammon2006a; Ehlich Reference Ehlich and Austauschdienst2007) and therefore its overall ‘communicative potential’ (de Swaan Reference de Swaan2001: 33). It may, furthermore, be fuelled by a critical stance towards the profound and far-reaching reform of German universities that seeks to bring them in closer alignment with what may be generalized as the ‘Anglo-American modular BA/MA/PhD model’, thus embracing and emphasizing economic principles and quantifiable accountability in all domains of learning, teaching, research and administration (see Schiewe Reference Schiewe2008 for a critical linguistic analysis of the anglicized German language used by the proponents of this reform).

However, the aforementioned relative reluctance of German-speaking scholars to publish in internationally distributed journals may also partly be due to the adherence to culture-specific methodological standards. Such specifics include the predominance of scholarly argumentation in conjunction with a lack of empirical research in some domains (Riemer Reference Riemer2007b) as well as the fact that although the complexity of the learning–teaching relationship is acknowledged, research employing multivariate statistical procedures is rare (Grotjahn Reference Grotjahn, Scherfer and Wolff2006). In our view, research on L2 German may attempt to impact more on the international scientific discussion than has been the case so far. Engaging with the highly culture-specific genres of spoken and written academic prose, for example, could give rise to a stimulating debate on the epistemological conditions of and context for academic inquiry and dissemination.

One strand of the epistemological discussion in German-speaking countries has been concerned with models of man as concepts that – often rather unconsciously – shape our view of reality, of what counts as data, and how we conduct research (Kurtz Reference Kurtz2003; Bleyhl Reference Bleyhl2004; Grotjahn Reference Grotjahn2005). Such a valuable explication of fundamental assumptions on the interrelations between the individual, their learning, and the learning environment resonates with wider themes, in particular with the epistemological and ontological divide between ‘exploratory-interpretive’ (Baumann, Nied & Hoffmann Reference Baumann, Nied and Hoffmann2009) and ‘constructivist-interpretive’ (Wendt Reference Wendt2002) approaches to L2 learning, teaching and research. In German-speaking countries, the pedagogical principles which have been propagated by early proponents of radical constructivism – learner-centred, action-centred, process-oriented and authentic-holistic L2 learning and teaching (Wolff Reference Wolff1994; Wendt Reference Wendt1996) – have been well-received. Generally speaking, these principles have profoundly penetrated pedagogic discourse, although as tendencies rather than the axioms as which they were originally formulated. However, the epistemological claims of radical constructivism, in particular its total separation of the ontic world (the objective reality) from the representational world (the subjective reality), and its replacement of the truth criterion by the concept of viability, have been rejected, both as a theory of human knowledge, as well as a unifying meta-theory for L2 pedagogy (see the heated controversy in the 2002 issues of the journal Zeitschrift für Fremdsprachenforschung). Although this debate has largely been confined to German-speaking countries, moderate versions of constructivism, in which self-directed and ‘constructivist’ learning is suggested as an addition rather than an alternative to ‘instructivist’ teaching have been discussed in the wider international scene (Kaufman Reference Kaufman2004).

Discussion of ethical concerns in research on L2 German is clearly an under-represented area. In contrast to the Handbook of applied linguistics (Davies & Elder Reference Davies and Elder2004), where ethical issues are dealt with in the context of philosophy of science, research methodology, language testing, and Critical Applied Linguistics, no such discussion can be found in the two volumes of Deutsch als Fremdsprache – Ein internationales Handbuch/German as a Foreign Language – An international handbook (Helbig, Götze, Henrici & Krumm Reference Helbig, Götze, Henrici and Krumm2001). With respect to test development and administration for example, Krumm (Reference Krumm2005b: 25) has recommended that test development agencies, educational institutions and test experts should exercise tight restraint in areas where language tests might be used for purposes of immigration policy. Whether such abstinence is the best way of dealing with the delicate issue of test usage by political stake-holders, and if so, how this should or could be enacted, are pressing questions the research community will have to address.

2.2 Language policy

Due to the extent of the scholarly debate with respect to German language policy, this section can only give a brief overview. It will focus on three main issues: the role of German as a scientific language both within and outside of Germany; the role of German as a taught subject in secondary schools in non-German speaking countries; and policy issues with respect to L2 German in Germany and Austria.

The decline of German as a scientific language has been amply documented (e.g. Ammon Reference Ammon, Gardt and Hüppauf2004; Erling & Hilgendorf Reference Erling and Hilgendorf2006). Not only has its use diminished considerably in international journals in almost all subjects except the humanities, it is threatened as a medium of publication and more and more of instruction, especially in the hard sciences, within German-speaking countries (Coleman Reference Coleman2006; Erling & Hilgendorf Reference Erling and Hilgendorf2006; Alexander Reference Alexander, Wilkinson and Zegers2008). In medicine, for example, the growing influence of the impact factor of journals in determining who receives research funding and even who receives tenure and promotion has led to the fact that high-quality original research articles are no longer published in German by German-speaking researchers. Because most German health-care professionals are still not able or willing to read English, there is a growing time lag between the appearance of ground-breaking new knowledge and its reception by a large part of the medical community in Germany (Ofori-Adjei, Antes, Tharyan, Slade & Tamber Reference Ofori-Adjei, Antes, Tharyan, Slade and Tamber2006).

The decline of German as a scholarly language and as a lingua franca in combination with its uncertain status of a working language of the European Union (Ammon Reference Ammon2006b) has led to its concomitant decline as a taught foreign language in secondary schools in many non-German speaking countries, particularly in Western and Northern Europe, in Japan and in South Korea (Ständige Arbeitsgruppe Deutsch als Fremdsprache [StADaF] 2006; Ammon Reference Ammon2007). In many Central and East European countries as well as in Turkey and in Arabic-speaking countries, German has remained or become the second most widely chosen language after English, primarily due to the economic importance of Germany and the attractiveness of its universities, particularly in technical fields (StADaF 2006, Teichler Reference Teichler2007). For a critical, post-colonial reading of international German language policies, see Nord (Reference Nord2006).

Twenty-one per cent of the population of West Germany have a migration background, in a number of West German regions and in Berlin, the percentage is 50 per cent and more. Around 30 per cent of young minority learners attend kindergartens and schools with a migration background of 50 per cent (Autorengruppe Bildungsberichtserstattung Reference Bildungsberichterstattung2008). Against this backdrop, policy issues have focused on remedial instruction in German as a second language in German and other school subjects (e.g. Gogolin Reference Gogolin2007; Kuhs Reference Kuhs2007; Rösch Reference Rösch2007) together with the introduction of German as a second language as a degree program and as a school subject or required subject for elementary teachers (e.g. Pommerin-Götze Reference Pommerin-Götze, Casper-Hehne, Koreik and Middeke2006). Further policy issues have focused on Integrationskurse (required language and culture courses for immigrants) and the new German Einbürgerungstest (naturalisation test; Krumm Reference Krumm2007).