Nach pädagogischen überlegungen texte für den daf-unterricht chronologisch neu strukturieren

Abstract

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] The following thesis will present a new method of teaching German literature for a beginning-level German language course. It follows six main ideas and molds these into a teaching approach named Pätch. First, the novella by E.T.A. Hoffmann, Der Sandmann, is used as an example of a highly advanced German text that is optimal for demonstrating that even difficult and lengthy literary texts can be applied in the classroom. Second, the course presented here has to be placed into the context of the second language acquisition field, to give an insight into how literature is already being taught. Third, the specific intercultural approach, as presented by Reviere, is used to emphasize a connection between German and American culture in order to show its relevance to the American student. Fourth, the texts had to be cut into fifteen smaller pieces so as to undermine the overwhelming effect of such a text, and for this purpose widely diverse teaching methods were included to create a productively focused language course, teaching the students to formulate their own language. Furthermore, these text-bits were rearranged to underline a pedagogically meaningful content-based course. For this reason, the fifth point elaborates on the structural oddities surrounding the work Rayuela by Julio Cortázar and Lebens- Ansichten des Katers Murr by E.T.A. Hoffmann. These literary masterpieces demonstrate how a complicatedly structured work may motivate to read texts with more excitement and focus -- and also to reread them. In this light, the final point behind the conception of this thesis is the hermeneutical philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer, which helps explain the necessity of reading literature with the goal to better understand the texts as well as to deal with the prospect of not understanding them.