Hints


     These two initial reading exercises fit very different Standards.  Exercise A focuses on the communications standards, the way in which the text's mode of expression can be confirmed in self-expression.  Exercise B strives for culture standards, understanding the text as a unique product of terms set by its world.  A comparison of these two emphases in this instance illustrates the difficulties posed when initial reading commences by emphasizing how the text presents cultural difference rather than how the text can enable self expression (the communications standards) or just seeing what the L2 text says from the standpoint of the L1 reader (the connections standards).

     The class identifying discourse types is on familiar ground.  Students know about predictable discourse patterns, from elephant and knock-knock jokes.  Once they are alerted to the question-question pattern in the text, then, they will easily know how to use it.  As a communication task, then, Exercise A avoids cognitive and background dissonance by focusing on a discursive pattern that is common to both German and English.

     If you rejected this initial reading task in favor of Exercise B, you may have been concerned that students would be unable to comprehend the references to Stalingrad and "Entnazifizierung" that occur later in Beckmann's and Frau Kramer's conversation.  However, initial reading, appropriately conducted as a class activity , would in any case involve no more than the first twenty lines or first two paragraphs of a text.  In these lines, references to Stalingrad and "Entnazifizierung" do not occur, and so need not interfere unduly.  Indeed, as the sample answers suggest, such background about the Nazi era is superfluous for initial comprehension of the text -- first and foremost, this scene is a linguistic confrontation of a particular type.

     Those students whose pre-reading work has addressed postwar circumstances with considerations such as "Stellt Euch vor, es hat in Eurem Land ein Krieg gegeben.  Welche Probleme würde es geben?" will have practiced expressions such as "Wohnung verlieren" and "Eltern / Kinder sterben."  Thus Exercise B did not need initial reading activities for cultural detail at this juncture.  Indeed, it would probably have proven a distraction.

     What Grade 8 and, indeed, all students undertaking initial reading do need was missing from Exercise B: focus for their initial reading.  Being told to read for important words is only part of the comprehension equation.  Readers need to know what kind of important words, what kind of semantic meanings to look for.  The search prompted by instructions such as "Finde die wichtigen Wörter" doesn't tell them enough.  Telling students "finde die Wörter, die mit Wohnungen zu tun haben," on the other hand, narrows that search to a feasible task.  If Exercise B had foregone the elaborate pre-reading and provided instruction to narrow a student's search, it would have been on par with Exercise A.  In that case, Exercises B would have guided students work toward the connections standards, seeing what the German text said.

     Note, too, that as emphasized in the introduction to Part 2, communication and connections standards represent the introductory level tasks probably most appropriate for pre- and initial reading exercises.

 EXERCISE A
 EXERCISE B