Christian Koch (Universität Siegen)

Spanish L2 students in search of their discourse markers. Teaching at the interface of applied linguistics and language practice

Two seminars held at the University of Siegen in last semester focused on the use and improvement of oral discourse markers in Spanish L2 (cf. Vande Casteele 2014 for a similar approach for written Spanish). Our previous analyses (e.g. Koch 2016, Koch/Thörle forthcoming) have shown that a lack of knowledge about discourse markers in the target language cannot mean that lexical elements with discourse structuring functions would be absent. Learners rather employ markers that differ in form and function from native habits.
Based on our observations, the aim of these courses was to sensitise students to their own ways of speaking. They practiced methods of data collection and processing, i.e. transcription of their own speech in several conversational situations, as well as qualitative and quantitative approaches to the analysis of speech data. Due to the deficient consideration of discourse markers in classroom language learning, the field of testing, discussing and producing oral activities became a special issue of these courses.
In this paper, the conception of the seminars, examples of the analyses and student evaluations will be presented and discussed.

• Koch, Christian (2016): Sí, sí, estudio Lehramt, sí. El uso de los marcadores de afirmación en el español de estudiantes germanohablantes. In: Testi e linguaggi 10, 159-172
• Koch, Christian/Thörle, Britta (forthcoming): The Discourse Markers sí, claro and vale in Spanish as a Foreign Language. In: Bello, Iria/Calvi, Maria Vittoria/Landone, Elena (eds.): Cognitive Insights in Discourse Markers in Second Language Acquisition. Bern: Lang.
• Vande Casteele, An (2014): Un estudio discursivo de los marcadores en el aula de lingüística española para no nativos. In: Reimann, Daniel (ed.): Kontrastive Linguistik und Fremdpsrachendidaktik Iberoromanisch – Deutsch. Studien zu Morphosyntax, Mediensprache, Lexikographie und Mehrsprachigkeitsdidaktik (Spanisch, Portugiesisch, Katalanisch, Deutsch). Tübingen: Narr, 159-179.

 

Biodata

Christian Koch works as a research assistant at the chair of Applied Linguistics/Romance Languages at the University of Siegen. In the meantime, from 2015 to 2017, he was also employed in didactics of Romance languages in at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Currently, he is preparing a PhD thesis about Romance polyglottism, i.e. the outstanding ability in speaking four or more Romance languages.