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This paper deals with the teaching of grammar in the English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom. In this context, a course book (English G 21 A2) is examined in regard to whether it is compatible with current theories about second language acquisition (SLA).
At the beginning of this paper, views on grammar teaching from the past and the present are summarized and this is followed by an analysis of the current curriculum concerning its guidelines for grammar teaching in the foreign language classroom. This analysis concludes that the curriculum of Brandenburg hardly gives any recommendations regarding the question of which grammatical phenomena should to be taught. This explains, at least partly, the important position course books take in the foreign language classroom. Teachers use them as a source of material as well has a guideline for which topics can be taught and in which order.
The following part gives an overview of cognitive models of SLA and foreign language teaching, among others Krashen’s Monitor Hypothesis, R. Ellis’ Weak Interface Model and Pienemann’s Processability Theory. On the basis of these models criteria for the ideal design of a course book, which would support grammar teaching according to current findings, are developed. Among those criteria are the offering of a lot of input in the target language, provision of practice activities and consciousness-raising activities, taking into consideration the sequence of acquisition and the provision of a diagnostic tool which enables the students to find out in which areas of the target language they need to improve. Furthermore, the inclusion of opportunities for (individual) revision is regarded as essential. All of those criteria are of course given under the reservation that the influence of course books on the happenings in the classroom is restricted as the final decisions are made by the teacher in the teaching situation.
In the analysis, one communicative intention which is usually a topic in the English lessons between the third and sixth year of learning is focused on. This communicative intention is talking about the future. First, the possibilities to express futurity in the English language are analysed and reduced for the use in teaching. The chosen course book is then described and analysed and the way the book deals with the topic of talking about the future is compared to the criteria which where specified earlier in the paper. This comparison showed that the book is compatible with SLA theories in many ways (e.g. concerning the explanations of grammatical structures) but that there is still room for improvement (e.g. concerning the amount of input and the number of consciousness-raising activities).
The present work is a case study contributing to the major planning project “Suedlink”. It is structured as follows: first, in a theoretical part, mandatory theories of social acceptance (Wüstenhagen et al., 2007), steps of participation (Münnich, 2014), and the governance theory (Benz and Dose, 2011) are elaborated. Secondly, the relevant methods are discussed. Thirdly, in a qualitative analytical part, the information that were gathered from the expert interviews are analyzed with the use of the aforementioned theories. In the fourth place, an empirical quantitative analysis of data regarding the public acceptance towards Suedlink is presented.
In this case study, with the use of qualitative and quantitative methods, two questions are answered: first, which governance aspects were relevant for the priority use of underground cables for the construction of high voltage direct current transmission lines? For this question, intensive document analysis and different expert interviews were conducted. Secondly, the central question of the present work addresses the question whether local or/and individual factors affect the public acceptance towards SüdLink. Here, in particular, it is interesting to analyze if the priority use of underground cables affected the people’s acceptance towards SuedLink. In order to respond to both questions, an online survey was conducted among citizen initiatives, district administrators, and individuals in social media during March till July 2016. Thereafter, the data was analyzed with the use of descriptive quantitative methods. The data shows, that underground cables not necessarily increase public acceptance (see also Menges and Beyer, 2013). On the contrary, individual and local criteria were relevant for the survey respondents. For example criteria such as the quality of participation, distance between home and transmission lines, and the additional financial burden (taxes, higher prices for electricity) were important for the evaluation. In addition, survey respondents who participated in citizen initiatives were more critical against the priority use of underground cables and SuedLink in general. Likewise, residential homeowners rejected every form of transmission lines.
The main results of this thesis are formulated in a class of surfaces (varifolds) generalizing closed and connected smooth submanifolds of Euclidean space which allows singularities. Given an indecomposable varifold with dimension at least two in some Euclidean space such that the first variation is locally bounded, the total variation is absolutely continuous with respect to the weight measure, the density of the weight measure is at least one outside a set of weight measure zero and the generalized mean curvature is locally summable to a natural power (dimension of the varifold minus one) with respect to the weight measure. The thesis presents an improved estimate of the set where the lower density is small in terms of the one dimensional Hausdorff measure. Moreover, if the support of the weight measure is compact, then the intrinsic diameter with respect to the support of the weight measure is estimated in terms of the generalized mean curvature. This estimate is in analogy to the diameter control for closed connected manifolds smoothly immersed in some Euclidean space of Peter Topping. Previously, it was not known whether the hypothesis in this thesis implies that two points in the support of the weight measure have finite geodesic distance.
Udmurt as an OV language
(2016)
This is the first study to investigate Hubert Haider's (2000, 2010, 2013, 2014) proposed systematic differences between OV and VO language in a family other than Germanic. Its aim is to gather evidence on whether basic word order is predictive of further properties of a language. The languages under investigation are the Finno-Ugric languages Udmurt (as an OV language) and Finnish (as a VO language). Counter to Kayne (1994), Haider proposes that the structure of a sentence with a head-final VP is fundamentally different from that of a sentence with a head-initial VP, e.g., OV languages do not exhibit a VP-shell structure, and they do not employ a TP layer with a structural subject position. Haider's proposed structural differences are said to result in the following empirically testable differences:
(a) VP: the availability of VP-internal adverbial intervention and scrambling only in OV-VPs;
(b) subjects: the lack of certain subject-object asymmetries in OV languages, i.e., lack of the subject condition and lack of superiority effects;
(c) V-complexes: the availability of partial predicate fronting only in OV languages; different orderings between selecting and selected verbs; the intervention of non-verbal material between verbs only in VO languages;
(d) V-particles: differences in the distribution of resultative phrases and verb particles.
Udmurt and Finnish behave in line with Haider's predictions with regard to the status of the subject, with regard to the order of selecting and selected verbs, and with regard to the availability of partial predicate fronting. Moreover, Udmurt allows for adverbial intervention and scrambling, as predicted, whereas the status of these properties in Finnish could not be reliably determined due to obligatory V-to-T. There is also counterevidence to Haider's predictions: Udmurt allows for non-verbal material between verbs, and the distribution of resultative phrases and verb particles is essentially as free as the distribution of adverbial phrases in both Finno-Ugric languages. As such, Haider's theory is not falsified by the data from Udmurt and Finnish (except for his theory on verb particles), but it is also not fully supported by the data.