Department of German

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Introduction

Towards this session's general goal of understanding the development of advanced-level language learning, this paper explores the role of text in advanced-level language instruction of German. Through an analysis of various genres appearing in both course materials and their corresponding tasks in six courses found at the three advanced instructional levels of the undergraduate curriculum at Georgetown University's German Department, I point to some of the textual patterns running through texts across course levels and across the upper curriculum at large. As will be shown, this patterning pertains to the relationship between tasks and text materials, and to issues of text structure, or rhetorical function, in which narration and argumentation play dominant roles. I conclude with a look into how such insights into the relationship between texts can have relevance for curriculum design and maintenance, as well as for the individual pedagogical choices found within a curricular setting.

Before addressing these points, a bit of background to the study itself, as well as a brief description of the curricular context in which these genres reside are in order.

Departmental interest in the topic of genre began approximately two years ago in accordance with an action-research project funded through the Spencer Grant Foundation. In this particular project (there were three in total), group members (including fellow graduate students Olga Liamkina, Marianna Ryshina-Pankova, Janel Galvanek) and I undertook a qualitative study in which we examined faculty members' and graduate students' notions of the term genre. As might be expected, a number of cultural and educational backgrounds and experiences were found to contribute to our informants' varying understandings of the term. In addition, this study revealed that knowledge of genre informed certain instructors' plans for course design and pedagogical practices. This included calling on genre knowledge in facilitating students' reading comprehension and interpretation of literary texts, and providing students feedback to their written and spoken tasks. Moreover, informants reported that knowledge of particular genres was helpful in understanding why certain texts appeared difficult for learners and why assignment guidelines did not always lead to desired language production from students.

From this qualitative study on instructors' perceptions of genre grew a curiosity to explore the specific genres actually appearing within the undergraduate curriculum. Last spring, an analysis of genre features pertaining to all text materials appearing at the first three levels and one course at the fourth level of instruction pointed to a progression of genres in terms of primary to secondary discourses, such that the beginning levels of instruction were dominated by genres located in the "primary" discourses of familiar, everyday life, whereas the more public "secondary" discourses found in institutionalized settings could be found at the higher instructional levels. Table 1 [See Appendix A] displays this progression, including the number of in-between texts identified as having blurred qualities of these two discourse frames.

The present study takes off from this work by examining the genres found in the latter instructional levels (both text materials and tasks), this time, however, with an eye towards the similarities and differences between advanced instructional levels.

As is made explicit in the individual course syllabi as well as the curricular level descriptors, emphasis within all three advanced instructional levels lies in preparing students to become literate users of German. This is in accordance with the department's broader curricular goals, such as the following statement taken from the departmental website [See Appendix B].

I have taken the liberty of underlining aspects of the statement I deem particularly vital to an understanding of literacy. According to a number of L1 and L2 literacy advocates such as Hasan (1996), Johns (1997), Kern (2000) and Byrnes ("Developing Multiple Literacies") to name just a few, the overarching goal of attaining literacy in foreign language (FL) educational environments resides in the ability to think critically. This is because as a central aim, critical thinking already entails that one possess adequate content knowledge and the sophisticated language necessary to convey that content appropriately. Particularly for academic settings, where there are multiple contexts in which meanings are recognized and created, a notion of literacy must be understood in terms of its pluralized form (Byrnes 2002). For the advanced-level instructor, this means that reaching high levels of literacy necessitates a clear knowledge of how meanings are made within texts, including most importantly their social situatedness within specific academic discourse communities.

Genre

In a curriculum where text plays a central role, such as Georgetown's German Department, it follows that such an exploration into advanced language development would necessarily entail a look at the textual framework of genre. In recent years and in a number of educational contexts (such as the Australian literacy movement, New Rhetoric, and ESP/EAP), the field of genre studies has provided rich analyses of texts relevant for L2 learners, all working towards creating access for its learners to the privileged discourses, or, in Gee's (1990) terms, the dominant "ways of being." With its ability to link meaning to form in a socially-constructed context, the construct of genre has been applied in particular to explicitly introduce students to the textual conventions and typical configurations of meaning that allow genres to be recognized, recreated and transformed. Within the field of English for Specific Purposes, ethnographic studies and contrastive analyses involving native and non-native English speakers have examined specific genres central to professional and educational ESL settings. Genre analyses in the Systemic Functional Linguistic tradition have explored among other things, the progression of genres used in the curricula of educational environments, one of the more notable research projects involving a look at the secondary school genres of history (Coffin 1997; Martin 1997, 2002).

Interpretations of the term genre - just as they proved in the qualitative study alluded to earlier - are wide-ranging, with some definitions emphasizing more the social situatedness of texts, others more the linguistic realizations for which particular situations call (Flowerdew 2002). A helpful definition comes from Martin (2002), who represents the linguistic orientation. He describes genre as "configurations of meaning … recurrently phased together to enact social practices" (p. 269).

Instrumental to a theory of genre are the notions that texts build upon each other to generate new genres (Bakhtin 1984), that they are as dynamic as the discourse communities in which they reside, and that they are shared events among its users (Johns 1997). Furthermore, the concept of genre, especially for L2 educational settings, needs to be understood as culturally and historically marked (Kramsch 1993). Thus, we would expect differences in the linguistic choices made by writers of German Realist vs. Expressionist novels, or in the choices made by writers of German vs. American academic research articles. And, one may even make the claim that the Spiegel article is a genre all onto its own.

Drawing on the various aspects of genre that both the literature and the informants from the qualitative study deemed important, the genre analyses of texts found in the curriculum relate to a number of features. These include communicative purpose or social function of the genre (such as entertaining, informing, questioning), the rhetorical function or dominant text structure (such as narration, description, argumentation, or conversation), topic or content, dominant and/or typical linguistic markers of the genre, the intended audience, the fiction/non-fiction dichotomy, and the status of private vs. public discourse (the latter understood in terms of "institutional" representation). Finally, an identifying label was given to the dominant genre evoked in the text.

The following analyses come from courses that were taught between Fall 2001 and Fall 2002, which means that in a dynamic curricular environment, such as in the German Department at Georgetown, certain texts and tasks (particularly for Level III and "Text in Context") have already been changed.

As Max has already introduced the three upper instructional levels of the GUGD curriculum, I would like at this point to elaborate a bit on the nature of the courses drawn upon in the analysis, as well as to the reasons why I chose to look at them. [See Appendix C for outline of courses]

At Level III, the first "advanced" level of the curriculum, which includes two sequenced courses, content focus is on the stories and histories of post-war Germany to the present, all told through the eyes of those experiencing these events in Germany. As one might expect, and as we will see shortly in the genres recorded, narrative and narration play significant roles in relating the situation after the war.

At Level IV, the second "advanced" level and the last level into which incoming undergraduate students can be placed, six courses are offered. Students are strongly encouraged to first take "Text in Context," one of the courses I look at in this study. In this course, students become engaged in three thematic foci: (1) the Holocaust and issues of memory, (2) the German higher educational system, and (3) the European Union. "Mysteries, Madness, Murder," another Level IV course, uses primarily literary texts to discuss the main themes of crime and justice. Both of these Level IV courses are offered regularly by the department and have been taught by a number of different instructors over the years.

Of the several courses offered at Level V, the final "advanced" level for undergraduates, I have chosen two courses that follow similar content emphases as those found in the courses at Level IV. The first, "Germany in Europe" looks at current political issues pertaining to Germany's dynamic relationship to Europe and the EU. The second, "Liebe, Lust und Leidenschaft," which Susanne Rinner will speak on in greater detail in her talk, deals with issues of love and friendship as they appear in German cultural representations.

Now onto some of the findings from the analyses...

In the text materials of the two Level III courses, the genres of short stories and historical accounts stand out as the predominant genres. Levels IV and V also show story genres, particularly within the realm of literary texts, however both of these upper levels, in contrast to Level III, include a number of genres situated in more public settings, including most notably newspaper and academic registers. In addition, literary genres, including novellas, dramas, and novels constitute a great number of the texts [See Appendix D].

When one takes a closer look at the underlying rhetorical structures of the texts, it becomes clear that narration appears in the majority of genres used at Level III, while texts at Levels IV and V contain some narrative elements in their structure and function, though often with narration playing a subservient role to other text structures, such as argumentative ones. This move from straightforward narrative texts at Level III, which involve concrete storylines in answering the question of "What happened?" to more complex and abstract modes of expression at the two higher instructional levels reflects well the observations made in L1 ethnographic studies that story-telling plays a fundamental role in the development of children's L1 literacy - both in family and early educational environments (Heath 1983, Gee 1990). It also correlates to the work from second language reading research, which has pointed to learners' greater comprehension and ease with texts built on narrative text structure than those involving the non-narrative mode (Carrell 1992).

To elaborate on this point further, I thought it might be helpful to show texts representing prototypical genres at each of the three advanced levels. The texts I have chosen all deal with various aspects of German identity. The first, "Drei Freunde" is a short story about the relationship of three men living in East Germany during the building of the Berlin Wall. Through the unfolding of events, the reader comes to an understanding regarding the different choices East and West Germans were confronted with during this historically significant period. Linguistically, this story contains the major narrative structure that Labov (1972) identified in his work on oral personal narratives (i.e., abstract, orientation, complicating action, resolution, and coda - with evaluation of the events appearing throughout), and it uses primarily temporal markers to set these different stages apart. These have been marked with a red pen.

The second text, taken from Level IV's "Text in Context" course, is a reflective essay that attempts to understand the conflicted German-Jewish past through the moving in and out of present and past tense frames. As the writer takes a walk with his young daughter through the Jewish cemetery, Berlin-Weißensee, he frequently relates personal narratives of his ancestors, and larger historical accounts of the German Jews. These embedded stories are marked mostly by changes in tense with some use of markers of temporality, and they, too, follow the basic five narrative stages outlined in Labov's framework.

The third text from the Level V course "Germany in Europe" can be identified in broad terms as a newspaper article, in more specific ones, a political editorial. In contrast to the other two texts, the structure of this article, written by the way by a leading German politician, follows a more argumentative one as it outlines reasons for rethinking German national and European identities. The writer relies on discourse markers of cohesion to take his readers through the various arguments in support of his position. These involve, among others, those used to compare and contrast statements, point to ironies in logic and show causal relationships.

In order to gain a sense of what such knowledge can mean in instructional settings, it is necessary to have a look at the genres called for in the written and spoken tasks of the three levels. As you can see from Table 4 [See Appendix E], the written genres found at Level III, include letter, narratives, newspaper article, jury plea and public speech, whereas the spoken genres refer to dialogic-oriented talk shows, discussions, and debates. At the time of the analysis for this level, these oral tasks primarily drew on debate and talk show genre frames evoked from American culture. In contrast, the graded spoken genres of Level IV involve monologic oral presentations with a register appropriate for German-speaking academic and/or more public contexts. At Level V, one finds a continuation of the monologic oral presentations from Level IV and the return of debates and discussions from Level III. It should be added that both presentations and debates at Levels IV and V are based for the most part on individual texts for which individual students are responsible. I will return to this point shortly.

All of the tasks (with exception to the journal writing at Levels IV and V) are based in one way or another on text materials. Most of these assignments require reference back to the thematic content highlighted in one or more texts, whereby the incorporation of relevant language features (particularly vocabulary) stemming from those original source texts is necessary for successful completion of the task.

When we look at the genre features in terms of the Systemic Functional Linguistic tripartite genre paradigm of field, tenor, and mode, whereby field refers to the content, tenor to the role relationships between participants involved and mode to their linguistic realizations (including among other things text structure), we see that in many cases students are asked to adjust one or more of these aspects from the text source to the production of their own text. To illustrate this, allow me to point to two concrete examples found at Levels III and IV. At Level III, students are asked to write a short story from the first person perspective based on the same events that are relayed in the story, "Drei Freunde." (the narrative text I presented earlier). The variation between this text and the students' text lies in the tenor: that is, the students must write from the viewpoint of another character introduced in the story, representing a different take on the events depending on whether the character favors East or West German politics. Through this task, students are encouraged to try out the same narrative structural markers of temporality, syntactic phrasing and lexicogrammatical features that made the original text a tight and emotionally compelling narrative.

At Level IV in the course "Madness, Mysteries, Murder," students also produce a creative writing assignment based on a genre introduced in class. Their assignment is to produce a "Krimi," which as many of you know can take on many shapes and sizes. In this particular course, students were introduced to three specific "Krimi" genres: a novella, a play and a novel. All three of these genres (and in this particular teaching context the term "genre" was expanded to include German literary periods) were discussed in class, using three respective texts as models. Thus, in this second example at Level IV, success of the task rests on a knowledge of the standardized typical features of a genre as well as the ability to recognize stylistically appropriate choices within that genre.

In terms of genres representing a more academic register, which can be found at Levels IV and V, the relationship between genres of text materials and tasks is much tighter. In other words, students are expected to create texts that mirror certain source texts. This is most striking in the task genre "précis," in which students are expected to trace the most relevant argument patterns arising in the source text through use of carefully chosen cohesive markers that show the hierarchical relationship between various points. In addition to this main body of text, other components of the précis include a brief summary introduction of the topic at hand, as well as a final evaluative section in which a critical stance to the ideas presented in the source text is provided. As you can see in Table 4 of genres appearing in tasks, development of this genre plays a significant role in the Level IV course, "Text in Context." It appears again at Level V, though clearly genres positioning interpretation and argumentation as their central social functions dominate at this highest instructional level. Here, students are provided with generic models for such texts, including the genres of editorials, academic essays and literary analyses. Susanne Rinner will illustrate this modeling relationship between text material and desired student output in her presentation for this very advanced level.

A final major difference between the Level III and the two higher instructional levels IV and V can be seen in the changing status of the texts themselves. The monologic oral presentations in particular, whereby students are responsible for conveying content from texts only they have read, become new sources of information for their peers in later written tasks. In "Text in Context," for example, students were required to incorporate ideas from these oral reports into their final essay comparing and contrasting American and European political systems. Looking at instruction from this perspective brings to light two important phenomena at this stage. First, students themselves are contributing texts to the classroom, so that the genre inventory of text materials all students encounter now expands. This means that we can reevaluate the original list of genres to include the students' new contributions. Second, this has the potential to strengthen students' perception that they are active participants in not only their own classroom discourse, but also the discourse of a discipline recognized within the target language. This has implications for their socialization into the academic and/or professional world of the target language.

Conclusion

To summarize, as the advanced levels progress in the curriculum, text structure is observed to move from predominantly narrative to non-narrative modes. Among the many linguistic resources drawn upon in texts, we have seen briefly how temporal and cohesive discourse markers support and signal such structural patterns.

For advanced-level instruction and research, this patterning draws attention to the instructional foci of the upper level's increasingly more complex and abstract content matter, which requires knowledge to be communicated in ways other than simply conveying personal experience.

Though this analysis is just a start in understanding how texts potentially function in a foreign language curriculum, I hope to have pointed to some of the major commonalities among and contrasts between texts at the three instructional levels, as well as highlight the important relationship between text source and text task.

References

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Carrell, P. L. (1992). Awareness of text structure: Effects on recall. Language Learning, 42(1), 1-20.
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Coffin, C. (1997). Constructing and giving value to the past: An investigation into secondary school history. In F. Christie, & J. R. Martin (Eds.), Genre and Institutions. Social Processes in the Workplace and School (pp. 196-230). London: Cassell.
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Crane, C., Galvanek, J., Liamkina, O., & Ryshina-Pankova, M. (March 9, 2002). Genre, where art thou? Tracing the role of genre in the foreign language curriculum. Paper presented at the UC Consortium Conference on Language Learning and Teaching.
Developing multiple literacies: A curriculum renewal project of the German Department at Georgetown University, 1997-2000. Retrieved November 10, 2002, from the World Wide Web http://www1.georgetown.edu/departments/german/programs/curriculum/.
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Jacobus, H. (November 11, 1994). Menschen ohne Grab. Die Zeit.
Johns, A. M., Ed. (2002). Genre in the Classroom. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
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Appendix A

Table 1: Genres across the GUGD Curriculum: From "Primary" to "Secondary" Discourses

Appendix B

Goals Statement from the GUGD undergraduate curriculum, "Developing Multiple Literacies"

The curriculum aims to enable students to become competent and culturally literate users of German by combining a focus on content with carefully conceived pedagogical interventions that reflect the best available knowledge in classroom-based second language acquisition research.

Appendix C

Table 2: Courses Analyzed for Genre Features (Levels III-V)

Level III: Advanced German: "Stories and Histories"

Advanced German I
Theme 1: Germany after 1945: End of the War, Dividing of Germany, Reconstruction
Theme 2: Two German States

Advanced German II
Theme 3: The Fall of the Berlin Wall and its Consequences
Theme 4: Personal and National Identity: Germany as a Multicultural Society

Level IV:

Level V:

Appendix D

Table 3: Genres Represented in Course Materials
(genres in bold signify texts containing narrative elements)

) (excerpted), Overview historical text (from GFL textbook), Historical essay, Short story/personal narrative (9x), Personal narrative (newspaper article), Drama (film) (2x), Documentary film (including interviews, autobiographical accounts, historical narrative), Folk song (including autobiography), Song, Film review, Political cartoons, Caricature, Slogans, Political appeal, Reflective essay, Newspaper report (4x), Survey report, Interview (3x), Poem, Novel

Appendix E

Table 4: Genres Represented in Students' Tasks

Genre Analysis: A Step Toward Understanding the Different Stages of
Advanced Language Instruction
Cori Crane
cranecp@georgetown.edu
German Department, Georgetown University
November 23, 2002

· Qualitative study on GUGD departmental members' notions of genre (2-year action research project, Spencer Grant Foundation)· Genre analysis of text materials (Levels I-IV): Progression from "primary" and "secondary" discourses (Gee 1990, 1998); See Table 1

II. Genre in a L2 Literacy Framework

· Critical and reflective thinking as L2 literacy goal (Hasan 1996; Johns 1997; Kern 2000; GUGD undergraduate curriculum website)· Genre analyses: L2 teaching and curricular contexts (e.g., Swales 1990; Christie & Martin 1997; Johns (Ed.) 2002) · Towards a definition of genre:
"Genres are configurations of meaning that are recurrently phased together to enact social practices." (Martin 2002)
- Genres build on each other (Bakhtin 1984)
- Genres as shared knowledge (Johns 1997)
- Genres as culturally and historically marked (Kramsch 1993)

III. Genre Analysis: The Upper Levels of the GUGD Curriculum

· Textual and Contextual Aspects for Genre Classification:
1. Communicative purpose or social function
2. Rhetorical function or dominant text structure
3. Topic or content
4. Dominant and/or typical linguistic markers of the genre
5. Intended audience
6. Fiction/non-fiction dichotomy
7. Private vs. public discourse (latter understood in terms of "institutional" representation).
8. Identifying label, i.e., genre name

· Advanced courses analyzed for genre features (Levels III, IV, V); See Table 2

IV. Findings and Discussion
· Predominance of narrative genres (personal narrative and historical account) at Level III (See Table 3)
· Progression of text structures: from narrative to non-narrative mode (See Table 3)
· Prototypical text samples from the three instructional levels:

1. Level III: "Drei Freunde" (Joachim Klecker, in Denk ich an Deutschland -- Menschen erzählen von ihren Hoffnungen und Ängsten, 1991): personal narrative
2. Level IV: "Menschen ohne Grab" (Hans Jacobus, Die Zeit, 11.11.94): reflective essay with narrative elements
3. Level V: "Für sich allein ist jedes Land den Abhängigkeiten stärker ausgeliefert" (Wolfgang Schäuble, FAZ, 15.5.98): newspaper article, political editorial
· Relationship between text materials and tasks (See Table 4):

1. Creative writing: Level III: personal narrative
Level IV: "Krimi": novella, play, novel

2. Expository writing: Levels IV and V: précis, editorial, academic essay, literary analysis
· Students as text material contributors at Levels IV and V

V. Conclusion
· Implications for understanding advanced-level instruction and curriculum

Special thanks to fellow "Genre Group" members, Olga Liamkina, Marianna Ryshina-Pankova and Janel Galvanek, the Spencer Grant Foundation (2000-2002), and to our group's mentor, Lourdes Ortega.