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Focusing on the triangulation of detective fiction, masculinity studies and disability studies, "Investigating the Disabled Detective – Disabled Masculinity and Masculine Disability in Contemporary Detective Fiction" shows that disability challenges common ideals of (hegemonic) masculinity as represented in detective fiction. After a theoretical introduction to the relevant focal points of the three research fields, the dissertation demonstrates that even the archetypal detectives Dupin and Holmes undermine certain nineteenth-century masculine ideals with their peculiarities. Shifting to contemporary detective fiction and adopting a literary disability studies perspective, the dissertation investigates how male detectives with a form of neurodiversity or a physical impairment negotiate their masculine identity in light of their disability in private and professional contexts. It argues that the occupation as a detective supports the disabled investigator to achieve ‘masculine disability’. Inversing the term ‘disabled masculinity’, predominantly used in research, ‘masculine disability’ introduces a decisively gendered reading of neurodiversity and (acquired) physical impairment in contemporary detective fiction. The term implies that the disabled detective (re)negotiates his masculine identity by implementing the disability in his professional investigations and accepting it as an important, yet not defining, characteristic of his (gender) identity. By applying this approach to five novels from contemporary British and American detective fiction, the dissertation demonstrates that masculinity and disability do not negate each other, as commonly assumed. Instead, it emphasises that disability allows the detective, as much as the reader, to rethink masculinity.
In a world where language defines the boundaries of one's understanding, the words of Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein resonate profoundly. Wittgenstein's assertion that "Die Grenzen meine Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt" (Wittgenstein 2016: v. 5.6) underscores the vital role of language in shaping our perceptions. Today, in a globalized and interconnected society, fluency in foreign languages is indispensable for individual success. Education must break down these linguistic barriers, and one promising approach is the integration of foreign languages into content subjects.
Teaching content subjects in a foreign language, a practice known as Content Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), not only enhances language skills but also cultivates cognitive abilities and intercultural competence. This approach expands horizons and aligns with the core principles of European education (Leaton Gray, Scott & Mehisto 2018: 50). The Kultusministerkonferenz (KMK) recognizes the benefits of CLIL and encourages its implementation in German schools (cf. KMK 2013a).
With the rising popularity of CLIL, textbooks in foreign languages have become widely available, simplifying teaching. However, the appropriateness of the language used in these materials remains an unanswered question. If textbooks impose excessive linguistic demands, they may inadvertently limit students' development and contradict the goal of CLIL.
This thesis focuses on addressing this issue by systematically analyzing language requirements in CLIL teaching materials, emphasizing receptive and productive skills in various subjects based on the Common European Framework of Reference. The aim is to identify a sequence of subjects that facilitates students' language skill development throughout their school years. Such a sequence would enable teachers to harness the full potential of CLIL, fostering a bidirectional approach where content subjects facilitate language learning.
While research on CLIL is extensive, studies on language requirements for bilingual students are limited. This thesis seeks to bridge this gap by presenting findings for History, Geography, Biology, and Mathematics, allowing for a comprehensive understanding of language demands. This research endeavors to enrich the field of bilingual education and CLIL, ultimately benefiting the academic success of students in an interconnected world.
Instructor feedback on written assignments is one of the most important elements in the writing process, especially for students writing in English as a foreign language. However, students are often critical of both the amount and quality of the feedback they receive. In order to better understand what makes feedback effective, this study explored the nature of students’ assessments of the educational alliance, and how their receptivity to, perceptions of, and decisions about using their instructors’ feedback differed depending on how strong they believed the educational alliance to be. This exploratory case study found that students not only assessed the quality of the educational alliance based on goal compatibility, task relevance, and teacher effectiveness, but that there was also a reciprocal relationship between these elements. Furthermore, students’ perceptions of the educational alliance directly influenced how they perceived the feedback, which made the instructor’s choice of feedback method largely irrelevant. Stronger educational alliances resulted in higher instances of critical engagement, intrinsic motivation, and feelings of self-efficacy. The multidirectional influence of goal, task, and bond mean that instructors who want to maximize their feedback efforts need to attend to all three.
Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has experienced growing importance in the last decades and an increasing number of schools have already implemented CLIL programmes or are planning to do so. Though the potentials of CLIL programmes are widely praised, first research results also raise doubts if CLIL students can live up to these high expectations. Both Fehling (2005) as well as Rumlich (2013; 2016), for example, found that CLIL programmes not inevitably show the expected results but that the CLIL students’ success might also be at least partially explained by other influences, such as the selection process of future CLIL students. Hence, CLIL students apparently fall short of the high expectations that are usually connected to the respective CLIL programmes and as this is mainly based on the unsatisfactory quality of these programmes, Rumlich concludes that “it is now high time to focus on the quality of CLIL provision” (Rumlich 2016: 452). He continues to explain that “the promises of CLIL do not materialise automatically owing to the fact that another language is used for learning in a non-language subject” (Rumlich 2016: 452). It must be assumed that the success of CLIL teaching also highly depends on the quality of the CLIL teachers.
In contrast to the continuously growing number of CLIL schools, however, the number of specifically trained CLIL teachers is comparably small. In Germany, CLIL teachers are not (yet) required to attend any special training in order to teach in a CLIL programme. Notwithstanding, is it sufficient for a CLIL teacher only to be trained in the content subject and the foreign language? Or does CLIL teaching require more than the sum of these two components? Do CLIL teachers need additional teaching competences to the ones of a content and a language teacher? In the light of the recent findings of CLIL programmes falling short of the high expectations, the answer to these questions must clearly be “Yes”. Hence, in order to appropriately train (future) CLIL teachers, special training programmes need to be developed which consider the teachers’ individual educational backgrounds, i.e. their qualifications as language and/or as content teachers and build up on these competences through adding the CLIL-specific teaching competences.
Therefore, this thesis aims at developing a German Framework for CLIL Teacher Education, which considers both the already published, theory-based standards of CLIL teacher education as well as the practical perspective of experienced CLIL teachers in Germany. This German Framework for CLIL Teacher Education classifies the different teaching competences, which are derived from integrating the theoretical and the practical perspective on CLIL teacher education, with regard to the three different competence areas, i.e. the general teaching competence, the language teaching competence and the subject teaching competence and is hence adaptable to different CLIL settings and educational backgrounds. In addition to developing this German Framework for CLIL Teacher Education, which provides the content of future CLIL teacher education programmes, this thesis discusses different forms of structurally implementing CLIL teacher education programmes in the existing structures of teacher education in Germany. This is achieved through analysing the current state of the art of CLIL teacher education at German universities and systematising the different forms of implementing these training programmes in the prevailing educational structures. Building on these first two steps, in the third and final step, this thesis develops a CLIL teacher education programme at a German university that is based on the results and elements of the German Framework for CLIL Teacher Education as well as the state of the art of CLIL teacher education in Germany. Thus, this thesis is allocated at the intersection between foreign language teaching as well as teacher education and is structured in eleven chapters.
In an attempt to put pronunciation training back in the limelight and to engage in a fruitful discussion on pronunciation- equal importance with other language skills, the current research project focuses on pronunciation. Specifically, one area that causes problems for L1-German speakers is concentrated on, namely the central approximant. German learners should not despair too much as even many native-English children stumble with /r/. For some, acquiring this sound takes a long time and even some professional help (see Secord 2007: 7-8). One problem that these children have is the substitution of /r/ with /w/. "Children with developmental speech substitution," write Raphael et al., "often produce the more easily articulated (…) /w/ for /r/" (2011: 119). Most native-English children require a long time to acquire this sound. According to Bleile, /r/ belongs to the last stage (i.e. stage 4) of a child- language development (see Bleile 2004: 106). This final stage can range from five years of age to adolescence. One of the greatest difficulties, for instance, occurs with postvocalic /r/ (or "[r] colored schwa") and consonant clusters with /r/ (see Bleile 2004: 106).
It is important at this juncture to direct attention to the organization of the current research project and how it addresses the /r/-problem. At the start of the current study, an appropriate and concise definition of the /r/-sound is proposed. While it can be easily stated that the letter <r> is the 18th letter in the English alphabet, it is much more arduous to define what is meant by the /r/-sound. In chapter 2, a number of definitions of /r/ are explored. Section 2.1 presents an articulatory description and section 2.2 offers an acoustic description. A theoretical definition is provided in section 2.3. By exploring the distinguishing features of the /r/-sound, it can be distinguished from other sounds. From these three perspectives, a more encompassing view of the complicated English /r/-sound can be obtained.
In chapter 3, three hypotheses are presented. The first two are the main hypotheses for the current study. There is also a third (minor) hypothesis and it is an offshoot from some of the research findings from the first hypothesis. In section 3.1.1, hypothesis 1 (H1) investigates the frequency of the problem that L1-German speakers have when speaking the American English /r/-sound aloud when it is postvocalic and in a weakened syllable. Hypothesis 2 (H2) is put forward in section 3.1.2. It explores the frequency of /w/-substitution for /r/ when the latter sound is prevocalic in a stressed syllable. For the final and third hypothesis (H3), one specific occassion where L1 interference occurs (i.e. /ɐ/ for /ə/) is researched in section 3.1.3.
Some organizational details concerning the study are also included in the third chapter. The general set-up of the study is provided in section 3.2.1. Information pertaining to both the disqualified participants of the study as well as the 50 test subjects who were selected for the study is available in section 3.2.1.2. Details on technical equipment and software programs are disclosed in sections 3.2.1.1 and 3.2.1.3. The prescribed reading texts that the test subjects needed to read aloud are presented in the subsections of section 3.2.2.
For a better understanding of the acoustic properties of the prevocalic /r/-sound, five expressions from the reading text are selected. In section 3.3, the expressions are also articulated by the author (a native speaker of a variety of English from North America) in four different scenarios. The scenarios try to illustrate a limited number of possible articulatory variations. The author utters the expressions in four different ways: 1.) with lip spreading, 2.) in isolation, 3.) in connected speech and 4.) with /w/-substitution for /r/. These articulations serve as a template for understanding how the acoustic features of /r/ changes. Some of these changes are noticeable in the articulations of the test subjects (presented in chapter 4).
In chapter 4, the data collected for the three hypotheses are presented. For H1, section 4.1 and its subsections document the formant readings of a number of English expressions which contain the postvocalic /r/. In this analysis, it is important to detect where the central approximant is elided. In cases of elision, the samples have their schwa-like sounds plotted in a vowel quadrilateral, so that their locations can be detected. In section 4.2 and its subsections, data observations for H2 are discussed. From these data, the extent of /w/-substitution for /r/ when it is prevocalic in a stressed syllable can be observed. In section 4.3, an analysis of the /ɐ/-sound from three German expressions as they are spoken by the 50 test subjects is presented for H3. Together with pertinent data (i.e. formant readings) from H1, a comparison is made between the locations of /ə/ and /ɐ/. This section concludes with a plotting of all samples of these two vowels in a vowel chart.
In the final chapter of the current study, the main findings of the three hypotheses are summarized. Chapter 5 also provides some insights into a few of the gaps or limitations in the present research. Future research endeavors are proposed in order to suggest possible avenues to advance the findings reported on in the fourth chapter. In addition, several teaching suggestions and pronunciation exercises for implementing the /r/-sound in class are presented.
Lastly, there is an appendix section that consists of 14 smaller appendices (i.e Volume 2). The spectrograms and formant readings for each expression spoken by each of the 50 test subjects are documented in Appendix A to M. In Appendix N, some charts, tables, diagrams, etc. that are discussed throughout the following chapters are made available. Copies of the original questionnaire that were filled out by the test subjects are also in Appendix N.
Over the last three decades researchers of Cognitive Metaphor Theory have shown conclusively that metaphor is motivated rather than arbitrary and often used to systematically map out conceptual territory. This cognitive semantic proposal holds the potential for alternative L2 teaching strategies. As an abstract domain, business discourse is naturally rich in metaphors and is additionally filled with consciously used metaphorical language to strategically manipulate clients and business partners. Business English courses especially stand to profit from metaphor-oriented language teaching, as (future) managers aim to quickly improve their language performance to be prepared for international business communication. In using metaphors, speakers as well as hearers conceptualize and thus experience one thing in terms of another. Having been made aware of the conceptual linkage, students are immediately equipped with a whole set of vocabulary they may already have learned for a concrete domain and are then able to elaborate in the more abstract area of business discourse. Enhanced metaphor awareness may thus prove to be a valuable vehicle for vocabulary acquisition as well as for vocabulary retention. This thesis is subdivided into ten chapters. With each successive chapter, the focus will increasingly sharpen on the main hypothesis that metaphor awareness raising and explicit teaching in the business English classroom assists the students to dip into their savings' and transfer already acquired vocabulary to abstract business discourse and thus to become more proficient business communicators. After an introduction to the main objectives, chapter two critically looks at the different strands of Cognitive Linguistic contributions to metaphor theory made within the last three decades and discusses the structure, function and processing of figurative language to single out relevant aspects of the language classroom applications. Chapter three narrows the perspective to the socio-economic discourse as the very target domain in focus and surveys the conceptual metaphors that have been identified for this target domain, namely the source domains most productive for the target and therefore most valuable for the language classroom. In chapter four Cognitive Linguistic findings are put in contact with language didactics; i.e., the Cognitive Linguistic basis is discussed in the context of language teaching and learning theories and a first classification of metaphor teaching in the theoretical framework of language didactics is proposed. Ten cornerstones summarize the theoretical output of the previous chapters and the respective didactic consequences are considered. Theories of cognitive psychology pertaining to noticing, processing, and storing metaphors are systematically revisited and expanded to formulate further didactic implications for metaphor teaching. The consequences drawn from both linguistic as well as didactic theory are translated into a list of ten short guidelines identifying essentials for the explicit integration of metaphors into the language classroom. In chapter five those experimental studies that have already been conducted in the field of Cognitive Linguistic-inspired figurative language teaching are systematically summarized and possible contributions to set up a didactic framework for metaphor teaching are investigated. Chapters six to nine then present a piece of original research. Starting out from five research questions tackling receptive and productive vocabulary acquisition and retention as well as the influence of and on the learner- level of language proficiency, a three-fold study was designed and conducted in a regular business English classroom and results are discussed in detail. The last chapter deals again with specific implications for teaching. Earlier statements about and claims for the language classroom are revisited and refined on the basis of the theoretical linguistic, didactic and empirical findings, and an agenda for further empirical investigations is sketched out.
This thesis deals with the verbal categories tense and aspect in the context of analysing the English perfect. The underlying notion of time is examined from the viewpoint of etymology and from the viewpoint of fields of knowledge that lie outside the immediate scope of temporal semantics, e.g. mathematics. The category tense is scrutinised by discussing the concept of Reichenbach tense and the concept of correlation (Giering). The starting point of the discussion of the category verbal aspect is the dichotomy perfective vs. imperfective in the Slavic languages. The main part about the perfect is concerned with the possessive perfect as a cross-linguistic phenomenon (including a comparison of the English and the Slavic perfect) and focuses on the usage and the meaning of the English present perfect. There are three appendices which are an integral part of this dissertation. Appendix A deals with the systematization of English verb forms and their graphical representation. Three different visualizations are presented, two of which are genuine to this paper. Appendix B reproduces the target setting according to which an animated visualization of English infinitives was programmed. Appendix C represents a synopsis of approaches to the English perfect in grammars and textbooks.