Komplexität und Grammatikalität in der Lernersprache. Eine Längsschnittstudie zur Entwicklung von Deutschkenntnissen ungarischer Muttersprachler

Fekete, Olga

Zusammenfassung

Summary In Hungary, research into the stages of the language acquisition process with re- spect to learner language is still somewhat sketchy. Consequently, the order and sequence in which linguistic features are taught in the foreign language classroom is currently based on the teacher’s instinct and experience as well as on knowledge of the frequency of these linguistic features. The present empirical study makes an important contribution of learner lan- guage research to filling this research gap: it was conducted over three school years and investigates the language development in Hungarian pupils studying German as a Foreign Language. The corpus consists of written narrative texts by fifteen learners of German both in German and in their native Hungarian. These learner texts are contrasted with native German narrative texts that were collected using the same elicitation instruments. The data thus provides a soph- isticated insight both into the native language competence of the Hungarian test persons and into the learner language features in their German L2 texts. The research focuses on the subjects’ active vocabulary and choice of cohesive devices, and also on their morphological and syntactic development, i.e., the se- quence of acquisition. In order to gain as complete a picture as possible of the foreign language development, the learner language is investigated both in terms of complexity and grammaticality. By including a large amount of sec- ondary data (such as language learning biographies, learning strategies, profi- ciency assessment tests, and the DaF teaching material used), it is possible to link the linguistic data to individual learner profiles. The study reveals that the Hungarian DaF data exhibits a combination of two tendencies: on the one hand, there are individual development processes (differ- ent tendency types with respect to the length of segments and texts and to vocabulary development), and, on the other hand, there is a universal sequence of stages in grammar acquisition. Results from different analytical methods are combined and integrated to arrive at a comprehensive view of learner language development and of possible di- dactic consequences. One of the overall results that become apparent is that Pienemann’s Teachability Hypothesis should be applied more rigorously also to teaching German as a Foreign Language in Hungary.