9 - Woher und wohin? Twenty-Six Years of Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German

Summary

The needs fulfilled by language study are as diverse as the students who undertake it. Students’ primary goals are to communicate in languages other than English, to gain a knowledge and understanding of the cultures where the languages are used, to provide a connection to other bodies of knowledge, to be able to compare and contrast the language being studied with other languages, and to participate in multilingual communities here and abroad… .

Thus, the purpose of learning a language is to know how, when, and why to say what to whom, to engage in meaningful human interaction, moving from an emphasis on how (grammar) to say what (vocabulary)—still critical elements—to the sociolinguistic and cultural aspects of language.

—Helene Zimmer-Loew

WHEN HELENE ZIMM ER-LOEW began as executive director of the American Association of Teachers of German (AATG) in 1985, language pedagogy in the United States was in mature Cold War mode, and German was for many as much a “strategic” language as Arabic, Farsi, and Chinese are today. In language pedagogy, communicative language teaching and the words and ideas of Steven Krashen and Tracy Terrell were on many young German teachers’ lips, pushing students to talk in “real-life” communicative situations, despite the persistent popularity of approaches such as audiolingualism and grammar translation in many schools and colleges. Several years later, most German teachers were likely as surprised as the rest of the world when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and Germany again became one country and the center of the world's attention. The post-Wende years saw a slow shift in focus away from a strong emphasis on the Krashen-Terrell style of teaching toward an increased focus on the text and cultural learning. Post 9/11 there came yet more new considerations of “real-world” issues in German language teaching, in particular as the language faced the increasing public perception of being part of “Old Europe,” sclerotic and thus no longer as relevant as newly designated “critical” languages. Finally, in more recent years, the field of German language teaching has witnessed a vigorous reassessment and reorientation in terms of its place on the global stage of language education, as the German classroom increasingly is viewed as connected to a globalized society.