Communicative Competence In Chinese German As A Foreign Language Teaching-Interpretations Of A Learning Goal

In the last two decades,the topic of communicative competence has gained an enormous amount of attention in Chinese research of foreign language didactics.The growing number of publications that deal with this topic speaks for itself:while a mere 330 texts on this topic were published from 1998 to 2002,this number increased to 1,972 publications between 2003 and 2007.Additionally from 2008 to 2012 this more than doubled with 4,970 texts.Commu-nicative competence plays a key role in every foreign language curriculum and also counts a central teaching and learning objective in German bachelor's degree programs.It seems how-ever,that despite the growing popularity of communicative competence,the communicative approaches have not yet gained traction within the teaching practice of Chinese instructors.It is commonly argued in research literature that the implementation of communicative approaches is especially hindered through the "traditional" active-passive relation between instructors and students.This master's thesis attempts to examine the issues from another per-spective.The hypothesis is that Chinese instructors have long neglected communicative ap-proaches in practice,because they interpret the concept of communicative competence quite differently.The goal of the following master's thesis hence is to demonstrate what Chinese instructors of German as a foreign language understand communicative competence to be and how this understanding impacts their teaching practice.In order to achieve this goal and to create a theoretical,or rather a conceptual basis for this thesis,the concept of communicative competence was initially explained.A possible def-inition of communicative competence,which considers that of the Common European Framework of References for Languages(CEFR)was presented herein.Additionally it was demonstrated how communicative competence was received and discussed in the Chinese didactical research.Taking up on this,interviews with nine Chinese instructors of German as a foreign language were conducted.Within the interests of this research to which individual views and experiences are central,it is beneficial to conduct qualitative,open-form interviews,that al-low the interviewees to share their relevant experiences without being influenced by the means in which the questions were presented.For this reason,a so-called narrative interview,following Gabriele Rosenthal(2005)was chosen.Compared to guided interviews which tend to be more restrictive or targeted,a narrative interview offers the interviewed party more space to express their opinions and develop their response to the relevant topic.The resulting data were then analyzed using the comprehensive content analysis developed by Philipp Mayring(2015).In a three-step generalization process,the following categories were be de-fined:“lesson routine","communicative approaches","comprehension of communicative competence" and "training of instructors".The evaluation of the interviews showed that the interviewed instructors understand communicative competence to be the ability to express oneself in a communicative instance,based on the situation and target they are confronted with.According to the interviewees,communicative competence is comprised of many partial competences.Among these compe-tences are "linguistic competences","general competences" and a "feeling for language".At first glance,it appeared that there is no significant deviation from the concept of communica-tive competence that is presented in the first section of this thesis,since the majority of com-petences that the instructors mentioned are also included in the CEFR.However,it was found that the interviewed instructors did not regard linguistic competences to be a facet of commu-nicative competence-as does the CEFR-but rather its foundation.For this reason they tend to emphasize other methodical focuses in their teaching practice.By concentrating on recep-tive and reproductive exercises,there is generally not enough time during a lesson for creative and open exercises that allow students to apply and therefore improve and consolidate their language skills.Within the analysis it also became clear that more instructors noticed that their stu-dents possessed a considerable vocabulary and understanding for grammar,yet had great dif-ficulty when required to actively use the language.For example,they mentioned that students had problems with written language production,required a very long time to formulate oral speech and demonstrated challenges in organizing communication.The instructors are aware of the fact that a solid command of language skills does not necessarily correlate to pragmatic competence.Within the evaluation of the findings it was however evident that some instruc-tors have a vague idea of the role that sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence plays within communicative language use.or rather how this can be promoted in class.The analysis of the interviews showed that all of the instructors would prefer a com-municative.or rather more communicative lesson.However,in their view the implementation of communicative approaches is hindered by numerous factors.In this context,several mis-understandings regarding communicative approaches were identified,that presumably root in the deficient professional training of some instructors.In conclusion it can be said that this thesis functions not only as a presentation of find-ings,but a contribution to the growing corpus of research on intercultural foreign language didactics.As the thesis stresses,the outstanding importance of cultural context for the transfer of foreign language didactic learning objectives it is relevant for the international community of German as a second language instructors who are planning to teach in China and also for those Chinese instructors interested in the instruction of German as a second language.