Meaning-Driven Explicit Instruction Incorporating Metalinguistic Awareness

Acquisition of the German Dative case by advanced instructed language learners (Dissertation Abstract)

Olga Liamkina German Department Georgetown University

This dissertation project stems from the need to address the difficulties that even advanced instructed foreign language learners experience when using certain grammatical categories, which do not exist in their native language. German Dative case presents such a challenge for native speakers of English. Extensive classroom observations of a Level IV German language course Text in Context in the GU German Department curriculum and results of a pilot study revealed that the learners rely on the transfer strategies from their native language, such as use of prepositional phrases, instead of employing the case system – although Dative case is formally introduced very early in language instruction. Therefore, this project will investigate whether explicit meaning-based instruction incorporating metalinguistic awareness can help advanced learners acquire the ability to express a wide range of meanings using the Dative case and therefore to sound more native-like.

This project draws on research within two theoretical fields, namely Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition (SLA), and has relevance for practical classroom applications for foreign language teaching.

One of the major theoretical assumptions of Cognitive linguistics is that grammatical categories (cases among them) are not arbitrary but motivated by semantics. Langacker (1987) claims that grammatical categories are themselves symbolic in nature and that grammatical constructions represent grammaticalization of conventional imagery – they structure and construe situations in a particular way for linguistic purposes. Recent contributions in this line of inquiry have challenged the prevalent assumptions that morphological cases are mere grammatical markers without inner semantic content (Nikiforidou 1991, Janda 1993, Dabrowska 1997, Dewell 2000); instead, cases are seen as one of the primary tools for construal of non-linguistic material in a way that varies from language to language. Although many researchers working within traditional descriptive or semantics frameworks have given accounts of the German Dative, their theoretical frameworks do not allow them to account for all meanings and uses of Dative both in prepositional and clausal realms in a principled and consistent way. Smith (1987) was the first to establish a semantic network for the range of meanings regularly associated with the German Dative case based on work of Langacker and others in Cognitive Linguistics; therefore, his analysis will be taken as a point of departure in applying insights from theoretical linguistics to language teaching. Many Cognitive Linguists (Taylor, 1993; Dirven & Radden, to appear) advocate explicit grammar teaching as a means for awareness raising and promoting insight into L2, thereby facilitating its acquisition; they argue that these insights will reduce the perceived arbitrariness of language and transform it from learning a host of exceptions into understanding how and why the system works the way it does.

This stance is echoed in the SLA literature on explicit teaching and learning (DeKeyser, 1998; Norris & Ortega, 2000; Ellis, 2002; Hulstijn, 2002). Explicitly drawing learner attention to the form while keeping the overall focus of language instruction on meaning falls under the rubric of “focus-on-form” research work in SLA (Long & Robinson, 1998; Doughty & Williams, 1998; Doughty, 2001). The fundamental assumption of this research is that attending simultaneously to form, meaning, and use will facilitate cognitive mapping between these three areas of linguistic expression, which is fundamental to language learning. Since case markings are neither perceptually salient nor communicatively necessary, they are prime candidates for focus-on-form treatments that are designed to engage learner attention and to facilitate noticing of these forms and their function in conveying a certain range of meanings. This project is a focus-on-form study in that it will be embedded in text- and genre-based content instruction where simultaneous processing of form and meaning is already a central design feature of the course. It is also based on the premise that, if the underlying conceptual structure of the German Dative case can be discovered and learned, it will aid learners to develop a richer understanding of the relationship between conceptual and linguistic categories and will lead to more systematic perspective taking, consistent with that of the native speakers.

The project is located at the Level IV German course Text in Context. It employs a longitudinal pre- and post-test design. Pre-test, pedagogical intervention, post-test, and delayed post-test took place over a semester-long period. The participants came from the intact groups, i.e., sections of the Text in Context course taught in the Fall semesters of 2003. The section taught by the researcher was assigned to the experimental condition; the section taught by another instructor was assigned to the control condition. Before the beginning of the study, all participants filled out a short background questionnaire that elicited information about their prior experiences of learning German and other foreign languages. Experimental group participated in the entire study; the control group was administered the pre-test and the delayed post-test only.

The pre-test consisted of two components: 1) writing sample produced by the students after the two initial weeks of instruction in response to a writing task (condolence letter) regularly assigned in Text in Context; student letters were analyzed to establish the baseline for control over forms and meanings of the Dative case in writing; 2) a short written test tapping into students’ procedural and declarative knowledge of the meanings and functions of the Dative case; students were asked to orally elaborate on their answers on the written test and their comments were audio-taped; this part of the pre-test was conducted outside of class.

Pedagogical intervention consisted of four 30-minute sessions of explicit metalinguistic explanations targeting four core meanings of the German Dative (Recipient, Minus Possessor, Beneficiary/Maleficiary, and Experiencer), supplemented by several homework assignments. These sessions took place during the first unit of the course (approximately first six weeks of instruction) and were integrated into the regular class instruction using established course materials.

The post test and delayed post-test consisted of two alternative versions of the written test administered as a pre-test; participants’ oral elaborations on the written answers were again audio-taped. In addition to the tests and follow-up oral interviews, the dataset for both post-tests included two writing samples produced by the students in the middle and at the end of the semester in response to two regularly assigned tasks in this course (a letter to the editor and a write-up of a formal speech); student writing was comparatively analyzed to gauge student progress in acquiring the meanings and functions of the Dative case since the beginning of the semester.

In addition, all class sessions during the semester were audio-taped; instances of classroom discourse where the focus explicitly shifted to the meaning and use of the Dative case (including four intervention sessions) were transcribed and analyzed in order to gain further insights into the process of concept acquisition as a result of multiple encounters with the Dative case in an instructed environment. Similarly, learners’ written production over the course of the semester was analyzed to shed light on individual progress of the acquisition of the Dative. This analysis of everyday class work should help uncover the process (and not only the results) of acquiring formal ways to express meanings. Working within an existing course with established materials, whose choice was driven by thematic and discourse considerations, contributed to the ecological validity of the study, as did working with intact classes.

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