The German ditransitive construction: A challenge for foreign learners.
(2024) Constructionist Approaches to Language Pedagogy (CALP IV) — Location: Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (18.March.2024)
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- Abstract
- The study focuses on the German ditransitive construction in a contrastive perspective. It replicates tests conducted by De Knop & Mollica (fc. 2023) with Italian students of German which aimed at defining the challenging issues related to the learning of German ditransitive constructions. The tests revealed that a mere functional description of the ditransitive construction and its constituents is not satisfactory, especially to explain the order of both objects (indirect and direct) in pronominal form (Lenerz 1977). This order is fundamentally different in Italian. As the order of the objects is similar in French and German in the 3rd person, we expect French-speaking students to have fewer difficulties than Italian learners with the German ditransitive construction – at least for the instantiations in the 3rd person singular or plural. This similarity can be exploited for the development of a proper teaching methodology according to the principle of scaffolding, which can start from examples in the 3rd person, to then move to examples in the 1st or 2nd person which have a different object order. Just like in the study by De Knop & Mollica (fc. 2023), we advocate a teaching methodology based on visualization and structural priming which takes into account the whole construction. This is being tested with a posttest which shows promising results.
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De Knop, S., & Gallez, F. (2024). The German ditransitive construction: A challenge for foreign learners. Constructionist Approaches to Language Pedagogy (CALP IV), Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/260084