Students’ accounts of grammatical forms of German that are difficult, unattainable, and irrelevant for self-expression

ABSTRACT

This study examined the responses of 39 first-year, 63 second-year, 20 third-year, and 19 fourth-year US college learners of German when they were asked what forms of L2 grammar they, respectively, find particularly difficult; do not expect to ever acquire fully; and believe are not necessary for self-expression. Nominal morphology – particularly case markings – figured prominently responses as a whole. Forms that were considered unattainable were also found to be difficult but the reverse was not true, which suggests that for learners in this study difficulty did not automatically connote impossible acquisition. Furthermore, Year 1 learners were on the whole the most optimistic group with regard to their expected final attainment; Year 2 learners the most pessimistic. This study raises questions about (1) whether researchers and learners adhere to different definitions of ‘acquisition’ even as they both concern themselves especially with nominal morphology/case and verb placement; (2) whether especially beginners’ assessments of a form's difficulty, attainability, and communicative relevance work together to direct their allocation of attention, i.e. whether there are attitudinal components to noticing; and (3) what learning and attitudinal trajectories are suggested by unexpected differences between learner populations (e.g. between Year 1 and Year 2) as well as unexpected similarities (e.g. between Year 1 and Year 4 learners).

KEYWORDS:

• Learner perceptions
• grammar
• awareness
• noticing
• foreign language pedagogy

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the students and their teachers for their participation in this study and the referees and authors of this article for their close and attentive reading and their very helpful suggestions that have improved this work. All errors are, however, are mine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The specific questions that students answered were: which forms of German do you find (a)/(b) the most/least relevant in expressing yourself?; (c)/(d) do you find the most difficult/the easiest?; (e) do you believe you probably will never master completely?

2. It needs to be conceded, however, that responses of ‘all’ or ‘nothing’ may have been another form of evasion.

3. Although the relevant question on the questionnaire prompted learners to name forms they considered communicatively irrelevant (‘not necessary for their self-expression’), responses such as ‘nothing’ or ‘do not know’ were possible and, as noted in Table 1, occurred.

4. It needs to be noted that only 16 Year 4 students responded to the question so that a single respondent accounted for 6.25% of responses.

5. In the intervening Years 2 and 3, not a single respondent expressed the expectation of acquiring the complete German grammar.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Monika Chavez

Monika Chavez is a professor of German and second language acquisition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her current research interests focus on learners’ perceptions of language, inside and outside the classroom. She also is co-author of the first-year German textbook Vorsprung.