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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