Germanistik, Deutsche Sprache und Literatur
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Towards a German grammar programme for post-leaving certificate students at Dublin City University
(1999)
With the introduction of the communicative method of language learning, overall standards of grammatical competence and performance among Irish second level students would appear to have been significantly reduced. As a consequence, learners who continue to study a given language at third level apparently no longer possess the knowledge which, under the grammar-translation methodology, further education institutions were able to build upon. This thesis examines the basis for the above perceptions, investigates the role of formal grammar instruction in the second language acquisition process and reports on a programme which was developed at Dublin City University (DCU) in order to ease, for Irish university students of German, the transition from a primarily memory-based approach to language acquisition to the analytical approach which is still being considered crucial to a university student's linguistic education. While the research was undertaken in response to locally existing difficulties, it may also be considered as a case study of more general interest, and as such serve as an exemplar to German departments in other universities as well as to other foreign language departments both within DCU or outside. The aim of the programme under investigation was to ease the transition on a socio-affective, cognitive and metacognitive level without lowering overall proficiency expectations and standards. Primary research was conducted among secondary school teachers, post-Leaving Certificate students on entry into DCU and among third level lecturers. The purpose of this research was to identify and define the programme’s content and progression. To this effect, the German junior and senior cycle syllabi at second level were also taken into consideration. The subsequent German grammar programme was implemented at DCU in the academic year 1996/7. While the programme would appear to have been judged favourably regarding some affective and cognitive-motivational aspects, results show mixed success rates for the other two factors under investigation, cognitive-analytical and metacognitive skills. Thus, some degree courses and some language combinations clearly benefited more from the programme than others. One of the conclusions drawn from this research suggests that unless certain changes are introduced prior to students’ entry into third level, university graduates are likely to remain well below the standards of accuracy and overall proficiency which were previously achieved.
Previous studies suggest that the application of Controlled Language (CL) rules can significantly improve the readability, consistency, and machine-translatability of source text. One of the justifications for the application of CL rules is that they can have a similar impact on several target languages by reducing the post-editing effort required to bring Machine Translation (Ml’) output to acceptable quality. In certain situations, however, post-editing services may not always be a viable solution. Web-based information is often expected to be made available in real-time to ensure that its access is not restricted to certain users based on their locale. Uncertainties remain with regard to the actual usefulness of MT output for such users, as no empirical study has examined the impact of CL rules on the usefulness, comprehensibility, and acceptability of MT technical documents from a Web user's perspective. In this study, a two-phase approach is used to determine whether Controlled English rules can have a significant impact on these three variables. First, individual CL rules are evaluated within an experimental environment, which is loosely based on a test suite.Two documents are then published and subject to a randomised evaluation within the framework of an online experiment using a customer satisfaction questionnaire. The findings indicate that a limited number of CL rules have a similar impact on the comprehensibility of French and German output at the segment level. The results of the online experiment show that the application of certain CL rules has the potential to significantly improve the comprehensibility of German MT technical documentation. Our findings also show that the introduction of CL rules did not lead to any significant improvement of the comprehensibility, usefulness, and acceptability of French MT technical documentation.
The political, the urban, and the cosmopolitan : the 1970s generation in Romanian-German poetry
(2010)
This study is an introduction to the body of work produced by the German poets who were born during or after World War II in Romania and whose almost simultaneous debut lies in the relatively liberal period 1965 – 1971. Helped onto the Romanian-German literary scene by a propitious environment and informed by the socialist ideology they were born “into,” the poets born between 1942 and 1955 formed a remarkable generation unit which sought to significantly renew German-language literature in Romania. Rejecting identification with the insulary Romanian-German communities, the young poets strove to create a socially and politically relevant verse expressing an urban and cosmopolitan attitude. The growing nationalist rhetoric and isolationist stance of Romania's regime and the material and psychological hardships endured by its population through the 1970s and 80s forced the generation to revise its incipient enthusiasm for Romanian socialism. Increasingly, the poets' work came to depict the threatened existence of the German minority and the harsh general living conditions in Romania and to provide an alternative to the absurd official proclamations of a “golden age” under Ceauşescu, despite the poetry's growing reliance on obscuring literary techniques. The emigration of most of the generation members in the mid to late 1980s brought about the eventual unravelling of the generation unit and marks the end of my study. By following the evolution of three themes – social and political engagement, the German minority, and the urban environment – which define the poets as a generation throughout their literary careers in Romania, the analysis illuminates not only the generation's development from identification with Romanian socialism and rejection of the German minority to criticism of the country's policies and a renewed interest in the fate of the German community but also the changing possibilities and limits of literary expression under communism. In addition to providing an introduction to the body of work created by the 1970s generation in Romania, the study also expands the understanding of German literature in the 20th century by providing new material on literature written under totalitarianism and of intercultural German literature.
Während der nationalsozialistischen Zeit und beginnend schon die Jahrzehnte davor, beobachtet man eine auffallende Zunahme von Jugendschriften aller Art, die auf altnordischer Literatur basierten. Es waren Adaptionen von Isländer- und Königssagas sowie der Snorra- und Lieder-Edda. Die Arbeit versucht Ursachen dafür zu finden und beschreibt dazu auch das Umfeld der Jugendlichen und die Strategien und Ziele, die man in der Erziehung im völkischen und nationalsozialistischen Sinn anhand der behandelten Literatur verfolgte.
Lange Zeit gab es in der deutschsprachigen Kinder- und Jugendliteraturkritik keine Unterscheidung zwischen phantastischen Erzählungen und Fantasy. Diese Gattungsdifferenzierung beginnt sich erst ab der Jahrtausendwende durchzusetzen. Betrachtet man das deutsche Textkorpus, das bis dahin global als Phantastik bezeichnet wurde, so lässt sich feststellen, dass der mittlerweile herausgearbeitete Unterschied zwischen phantastischen Erzählungen und Fantasy schon in den 1950er und 1960er Jahren zu erkennen ist. Sowohl die gattungstheoretischen Unterscheidungen als auch die Gattungsbegriffe haben jedoch erst um die Jahrtausendwende eine gewisse Festigkeit gewonnen.
Ein zentrales Anliegen dieser Arbeit ist es, die nicht-realistischen kinder- und jugendliterarischen Werke der Nachkriegsjahrzehnte im Lichte der jüngeren gattungstheoretischen Differenzierungen neu zu bewerten und ggf. zuzuordnen. Gefragt wird, ob in der deutschen Kinder- und Jugendliteratur der 1950er bis 1980er Jahre bereits Werke existieren, welche nach aktuellem Begriffsgebrauch als Fantasy zu bezeichnen sind. Ein dabei zu berücksichtigender Aspekt betrifft die Gattungsgeschichte, welche nicht mit der der englischer bzw. amerikanischer Kinder- und Jugendliteratur vergleichbar ist. Laut einer Definition von Ewers (2013) versuchte die deutsche Kinder- und Jugendliteraturwissenschaft lange Zeit, dem Genre Fantasy „beizukommen“, indem sie diese als ein Sub-Genre der Phantastik ansah. Hierin sieht er einen Irrweg. Sicherlich gibt es Parallelen zwischen phantastischer Erzählung und Fantasy, doch seien diese rein äußerlicher Natur.
Anhand der Definition von Ewers untersucht diese Arbeit, ab wann von Texten gesprochen werden kann, die dem jüngeren Verständnis von Fantasy entsprechen und welche kinder- und jugendliterarischen Werke nach diesem Erkenntnisstand hinzuzuzählen sind. Dabei liegt das Augenmerk auf der Bedeutung und Vorgeschichte von Fantasy-Literatur für den westlichen deutschsprachigen Raum. Methodisch wurde wie folgt vorgegangen: Ein Korpus aus kinder- und jugendliterarischen Texten wurde gebildet. Anschließend wurde dieser im Hinblick auf die in Ewers‘ Definitionsansatz genannten Charakteristika untersucht. Hieraus entwickelte sich der Gedanke, eine für die weiterführende Forschung hilfreichen Klassifizierung der phantastischen Kinder- und Jugendliteratur der Nachkriegszeit zu entwickeln, um den Stellenwert zeitgenössischer Fantasy verdeutlichen zu können.