Theresa Schenker (New Haven, Connecticut, USA) p.139-157
2023 Iss 2
Sondernummer zum Thema: DaF-Anfängerunterricht als Teil von Germanistik-Studiengängen – Ansätze, Motivation, Lernerfolge.
Abstract
With decreasing enrollment trends for German classes at US colleges, programs have to find ways to motivate students to select German as their foreign language and to interest them in continuing with the language beyond a language requirement. One possible way to increase students’ interest in German is to integrate telecollaboration as early as the first semester of German. Through telecollaboration students get to interact with German native speakers and learn first-hand about the target culture which can have a strong impact on their curiosity about the language and culture.
This article summarizes the projects that were incorporated in first-semester German over the last ten years at Yale University, a private college in the US. These include traditional e-mail exchanges between US learners of German and learners of English in Germany, a photo exchange using the mobile app Cluster, and tandem chat exchanges including both voice chat and text chat. The article outlines strengths and weaknesses of the different exchanges for first-semester classes. Student feedback on the exchanges will also be incorporated to shed light on learner preferences for different types of telecollaborative communication tools.