Pedagogical Linguistics - Current Issue

In the realm of first language (L1) grammar education, research on instruments assessing explicit grammatical understanding is limited. This article discusses an Item Response Theory (IRT) analysis on the Test for Grammatical Understanding (TGU), a multiple-choice tool designed for measuring such grammatical understanding, in this case pertaining to the concept of valency and related concepts (e.g., subject, objects). The results draw from 189 pre-university students (aged 14), who completed different versions of the TGU at multiple time points. Using IRT models for categorical data, we assessed item difficulty, discrimination, and response category functioning. Results highlight the TGU’s usability, version interchangeability, and its potential as a tool for monitoring progress in grammatical understanding. Additionally, differential item functioning (DIF) analyses indicated that most test items performed consistently across versions, though a few showed discrepancies requiring further examination. The discussion addresses item success variations, proposing items that might be omitted under time constraints, and examines the value of a ‘partial understanding’ answer category alongside categories reflecting ‘full’ and ‘no understanding.’ Future study recommendations include expanding TGUs to different linguistic concepts beyond valency and exploring its correlation with open reasoning tasks to further validate its effectiveness in assessing explicit grammatical understanding.

The learning of case paradigms is a well-documented challenge for learners of Russian, yet research on pedagogical approaches connecting evidence-based language acquisition theories with classroom practices of teaching case morphology is lacking. The current project addresses this gap by investigating the effects of usage-based language instruction for learning prototypical Russian nominative and accusative noun case endings to express subject and object information. This study analyzed the results of an assessment measure that followed a classroom intervention in immersion and non-immersion contexts with 48 English-speaking beginner learners of L2 Russian. Learners were introduced to accusative noun case endings through awareness raising activities, extensive task-based interpretation and production practice. The results show that systematically directing attention to form-meaning similarities and differences between L1 and L2 supported L2 grammar learning. Masculine and neuter accusative endings were found to pose greater challenges, as were nominative and accusative nouns in non-initial positions in the sentence (i.e., OVS, OSV, SVO, SOV). Beyond its instructional implications, the study offers insights into the underlying linguistic representations created in language immersion and non-immersion contexts.

Prosody, with its core elements the melody and timing of speech, is one of the aspects learners often struggle with when learning foreign languages in its spoken form. The teaching of prosody is however still largely overlooked — even though prosodic knowledge would help to improve learners’ comprehensibility. The present contribution concentrates on prosody teaching of French as a foreign language in Germany. We present the results of semi-structured interviews conducted with five experienced teachers of different regions in Germany. Our aim is to explore the needs among the foreign-language teachers. The teachers reported a rather marginal treatment of prosody, focusing instead on lexis and morpho-syntax in their teaching practice. Concurrently, all of them considered the relevance of prosodic topics as medium to high. We discuss several reasons for this discrepancy including issues of university education as well as quality of textbooks. The teachers also expressed the need to receive input on how to apply prosodic content in the classroom. This includes (a) comprehensible and didactically reduced teaching materials, (b) criteria for grading prosodic skills, (c) authentic audio material, and (d) in-service training. Finally, we present several ideas on how to make linguistic findings on prosody accessible for the foreign-language classroom.