Construction-based teaching of the German caused motion and intransitive constructions to Italian learners
(2016) Constructionist Approaches to Language Pedagogy 2 (CALP2) — Location: Université de Bâle (10.June.2016)
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- Abstract
- German caused motion constructions and intransitive constructions constitute a challenge for learners. The learning difficulties depend not only on the syntactic structure, but also on the correct selection of a placement or posture verb and the specification of morpho-syntactic cases, as illustrated in the following examples: (1) Im Deutschen muss man ein Komma zwischen Hauptsatz und Nebensatz setzen. [caused motion] Lit. ‘In German must one a comma between main sentence and subordinate sentence [ACCUSATIVE] set’ (2) Im Deutschen muss ein Komma zwischen Hauptsatz und Nebensatz stehen. [intransitive] Lit. ‘In German must a comma between main sentence and subordinate sentence [DATIVE] stand’. Even more difficult are such constructions when placement or posture verbs are used in so-called ‘Funktionsverbgefüge’ (Eisenberg (2006) or Van Pottelberge (2001)), e.g. in Verbindung setzen (lit. ‘to set into contact’ = ‘to get in touch’), in den Vordergrund stellen (lit. ‘to put into the foreground’ = ‘to place special emphasis on’). Surprisingly, neither scientific literature nor teaching manuals for German deal with these issues in a systematic way. Some few studies focus on one specific aspect, i.e. posture verbs (De Knop 2014; Kutscher & Schultze-Berndt 2007), or causative placement verbs (Berthele 2012; Fagan 1991). Our study wants to make up for this gap. Starting with a critical overview of teaching manuals for German, it then reports on a study conducted with 2 groups of Italian learners of German (B2-C1 level) at the University of Milano and aiming at comparing a traditional with a constructionist teaching methodology. After a pretest consisting in the translation of Italian sentences with caused motion or intransitive constructions in German, both groups were taught according to different methodologies. The control group received traditional lessons based on the semantic use of placement or posture verbs and the selection of case marking depending on the preposition in the construction. The test group was taught according to a new constructionist methodology which starts from the caused motion and the intransitive constructions and the lexical and syntactic realization within these constructions. The results of the posttests show promising results with the constructionist teaching strategy. Not only does it allow to explain foreign structures in a more precise way, but it makes it possible to teach several issues simultaneously and in a more comprehensive and holistic way. With the constructionist approach it is also possible to extend the analysis to the collocational uses of the causative and posture verbs in German and to describe the variety with these verbs.
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De Knop, S., & Mollica, F. (2016). Construction-based teaching of the German caused motion and intransitive constructions to Italian learners. Constructionist Approaches to Language Pedagogy 2 (CALP2), Université de Bâle. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/186310