The sound of each language - the specific combination of phonetic, which means suprasegmental and segmental structures and features such as voice, speech melody, rhythm, volume as well as sounds and sound sequences with their specific tonal characteristics - has a far-reaching significance both in practice and in foreign language teaching attaching great importance to the development of not only articulatory but also perceptual skills of students. It should be indicated that pronunciation skills include both production and perception. The development of productive ability presupposes the development of perceptual abilities as well (Hirschfeld/Reinke, 2018: 21). The two skill areas must gradually be taught parallel to each other. The competence expectations and demands in the perceptual area inevitably exceed the productive ones at all learning levels, because from the very beginning the learners have to engage with the foreign language perceptually. For this reason, listening comprehension must be given great attention during German classes, so that foreign learners of German have opportunity to pick up not only national standard varieties of the pronunciation but also colloquial and dialectal forms. Otherwise, they would expect native speakers to possess only a correct national standard pronunciation in certain situations like at school, university or in media. In this way, the level of development of perceptual abilities is reflected, which should be promoted much more intensively so that the listening processes does not become a problem in practice (Hirschfeld, 1996: 192).
The problem of insufficient level of development of perceptive abilities with regard to the national standard varieties of German is probably caused by the fact that, on the one hand, German Standard dominated until the 1990s, accordingly “a monocentric orientation of the lessons of German as a foreign language” prevailed: The Federal German Standard was considered the only correct German and therefore was generally taught including foreign language lessons without pointing out the pluricentric character of the German language (Kellermeier-Rehbein, 2014: 215). In the meantime, the perspective has changed in favor of the pluricentric approach, but the German standard variety is still regarded as the only target variety of the lesson. Many textbooks published that period are evidence of such a "monocentric orientation" (Kellermeier-Rehbein, 2014: 216) of teaching German as a foreign language that focus on the linguistic reality of Germany and often only marginally refer to the standard language features of Austria and Switzerland (Kellermeier -Rehbein, 2014: 215). On the other hand, pronunciation exercises have been before and unfortunately still are not optimally integrated into most textbooks (Hirschfeld/Reinke, 2018: 184). In addition, due to the lack of curricular time in German classes there is usually little chance to train such skills as comprehensive listening with regard to the national pronunciation variants that distinguish the national standard varieties (German, Austrian and Swiss German) from each other, which leads to unexpected difficulties in communication between German learners and native speakers outside of the classroom. It is particularly easy to recognize speakers of a certain language variety by their pronunciation, because the phonetic pronunciation is considered the most conspicuous identifying feature of national standard varieties (Kellermeier-Rehbein, 2014: 95). The pronunciation in particular often helps to understand where the speaker comes from, his/her Nationality and/or Region (Ulbrich, 2003: 155-158).
In the context of this article, our research question relates to the treatment of the national standard varieties in teaching of German as a foreign language. Traditionally, teaching the standard pronunciation of the German standard variety at Ukrainian universities forms the basis of German lessons. However, since the German language has a large number of national standard varieties, it is worth teaching them with regard to the target group and the level of competence. For beginners, it is enough to get to know the greeting formulas (e. g. Guten Tag/Grüß Gott/Grüezi), so that pluricentricity does not become an additional burden. With increasing language competence, however, this topic can be deepened. For German studies students, it would be an advantage to go into the special features of the national standard varieties at all language levels in depth: in lexicon, grammar, spelling, pronunciation. B. Rues emphasizes that it is definitely desirable for advanced learners to include regionally influenced slang in listening comprehension training (Rues, 2005: 236). In our opinion, this statement also concerns the development of perceptual competence with regard to the national standard varieties, because the pronunciation differences can be found at all pronunciation levels: in the vowels, consonants and prosody. “Although most of the differences occur systematically, they do not affect the system and are therefore to be regarded as purely phonetic differences” (Hirschfeld/Siebenhaar, 2013: 133).
The object of this research is the spoken media language of the TV announcers and moderators who have received training in speech education, their news announcements and comments represent the oral example of the standard language.
Sound recordings of news programs on Austrian and German television, which can be described as “model recordings” (Krech, 2009:16), serve as the material to be examined.
Research methodology. Methodologically, the following procedure was followed: In order to illuminate the question how well the learners of German as a foreign language are able to distinguish between the standard varieties during listening, they were offered audio recordings of news flashes and commentaries from Austrian (ORF) and German television (ZDF/ARD). A questionnaire consisting of two parts was developed as a data collection instrument. In the 1st part, the students are asked to determine when they hear it for the first time whether it is the German or Austrian standard variety and what characteristics are used to recognize it. In the second part, the students go into the pronunciation peculiarities of the Austrian model speakers more precisely and fill in the table with phonetic features of the Austrian standard variety. After the collected data had been evaluated there were drawn the conclusions concerning the teaching practical relevance.
When the course participants were listening to the media language for the first time, they were able to recognize in which case the standard Austrian variety was involved. The most important feature was a special phonetic pronunciation of the Austrian speakers.
The analysis of the data collected in Step 2 allows us to identify particularly striking pronunciation features of the Austrian standard variety, which were chopped off in the table by most of the course participants, to which belong the "o"-like complaint of the monophthong "a" and as the first component of the diphthong " au", "e"-like sound of the first component of the diphthong "ei", lack of glottal stop in syllable-initial vowels, partial delabialization of front tongue vowels with writing "ö" "ü", peculiarities in the "r" realization, realization of " ch” after “r” as an Ach-sound, unbreathed fortis, realization of “-ig” as [ik] in the final sound. The pronunciation variants mentioned above are realizations that differ greatly from the German standard pronunciation or from media spoken German.
Concerning the variety of standard varieties, R. Schmidlin points to the numerical dominance of speakers from Germany and the spread of federal German television programs in Austria and Switzerland, which has a significant influence on the national varieties of both countries. This is evidenced by the acceptance of federal German variants alongside national variants, according to Schmidlin (Schmidlin, 2011: 34).
To summarize, it can be said that a stronger focus on the standard variation of German in lessons of German as a foreign language is desirable. The aim is to raise awareness of the standard variation and to raise awareness of how to deal with national language norms. In addition, the usage of pronunciation varieties and variants in the classroom helps German learners better understand and be better understood by speakers from German speaking countries. Subsequently, the pronunciation features could be assigned to the phonostylistical levels, analyzing the spoken language of newsreaders, announcers, moderators as well as politicians and other public figures by phonostyllistical levels of read speech, memorized speech, freely producing speech up to spontaneous speech.
References:
Hirschfeld U., Reinke K. Phonetik im Fach Deutsch als Fremd- und Zweitsprache. 2., neu bearbeitete Auflage. Berlin: E. Schmidt Verlag, 2018
Hirschfeld U., Siebenhaar B. Aussprachevielfalt im Deutschen. Deutsch als Fremdsprache. Zeitschrift zur Theorie und Praxis des Faches Deutsch als Fremdsprache. 2013. Heft 3, S. 131-140.
Hirschfeld U. Standardaussprache – Ziel des Unterrichts Deutsch als Fremdsprache? Hallesche Schriften zur Sprechwissenschaft und Phonetik. 1996. Band 1, S. 187-194
Kellermeier-Rehbein B. Einführung in die nationalen Varietäten des Deutschen. Berlin: E. Schmidt Verlag, 2014.
Krech E.-M. u. a. Deutsches Aussprachewörterbuch. Berlin/New York, 2009
Rues B. Varietäten und Variation in der deutschen Aussprache. Deutsch als Fremdsprache. Zeitschrift zur Theorie und Praxis des Faches Deutsch als Fremdsprache. 2005. Heft 4, S. 232-237.
Schmidlin R. Die Vielfalt des Deutschen: Standard und Variation. Gebrauch, Einschätzung und Kodifizierung einer pluralistischen Sprache. Studia Linguistica Germanica, 106. Berlin/New York: Langenscheidt Verlag, 2011.
Ulbrich Chr. Prosodische Aussprachebesonderheiten der deutschen, österreichischen und schweizerischen Standardvarietät des Deutschen in gelesene Äußerungen von Nachrichtensprechern. Deutsch als Fremdsprache. Zeitschrift zur Theorie und Praxis des Faches Deutsch als Fremdsprache. 2003, S 155-158.
|
Голосування 
Ця робота ліцензується відповідно до Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Знайшли помилку? Виділіть помилковий текст мишкою і натисніть Ctrl + Enter