Communities Standards



     When that reader-audience is not only interested in comparing two cultures through its expressions, but also in joining into that act of communication, that reading conforms to communities standards.  The reader here seeks to identify key rhetorical features in texts and the way genres change the intents of texts, in order to ascertain what they can say to whom inside a particular community within a culture -- to transpose him- or herself into a new community of L2 speakers, out of the L1 world:

Communities Standards

reader-learner who negotiates among communities

(GOAL:  helping a reader join new communities through L2)

text                 contexts



text                 contexts

reader-audience


     The communities standards represent the reader-audiences' capability to be truly bicultural:  to be able to both recreate the cultural and linguistic patterns of a text as it speaks in its own context, and to then apply these patterns in their own lives (for their own purposes, but in the L2 community).

     The communities standards also indicate how a reader-learner becomes empowered, in learning how to negotiate among all three points of the language-use triangle, in two different languages. Moving into a community beyond the shelter environment of a classroom or textbook, the student must actively negotiate, renegotiate, and express what he or she learns as "reader" of a text in its cultural situation (and of the information and rhetorcal communication standards wtihin that text).  That is, the readers must learn to realize their goals in situationally-appropriate expressions, as those expressions are also reflected in a text as part of that situation.   Thus these standards synthesizes the previous four, putting the learner who can apply it in charge of his real world use of German for personal enjoyment and enrichment, for information, or for contact with new communities.  The new, independent learner moves to the apex of the triangle, who must balance his or her choice of identities  and learning goals in the L1 and L2 contexts, and the ways that those identities and goals are enacted in L1 and L2 contexts.

     The goal of this Unit is to let you experience how the Standards call for very different kinds of reading outcomes.  It will (1) exemplify appropriate reading exercises for target audiences at the 4th-, 8th-,  and 12th-grade levels;  (2) show how these reading tasks lead to the outcomes specified in the Standards; and (3) indicate how these tasks are to be evaluated to foster students' achieving the abilities to meet those Standards.

 COMMUNICATION STANDARDS
 CONNECTION STANDARDS
 CULTURE STANDARDS
 COMPARISONS STANDARDS


 INTRODUCTION TO EXERCISES