Assessing Strategic Cultural Competency: Holistic Approaches to Student Learning Through Media

Assessing Strategic Cultural Competency: Holistic Approaches to Student Learning Through Media JUDITH HAMMER Southern Connecticut State University Department of World Languages and Literatures 501 Crescent Street New Haven, CT 06515 Email: [email protected]

JANET SWAFFAR University of Texas Department of Germanic Studies 1 University Station C3300 Austin, TX 78712 Email: [email protected]

The current study investigated the impact of a German television program on changes in 4thsemester German students’ reflections on cultural perceptions over the course of 1 semester. Sixty-nine students at the University of Texas at Austin watched 4 episodes of the popular German television program Lindenstrasse. After viewing, students were asked to reflect in written response papers on cultural features and patterns of behavior and on cultural differences and similarities. The study results suggest that students’ perceptions of another culture can become more sophisticated when being exposed to authentic filmic material and asked to reflect in writing about observed plot features and cultural manifestations. The key to these results is a strategy for assessing not just students’ recall of cultural content, but also their strategic competencies in negotiating cultural difference. Changes in students’ cognitive styles were tracked by a scale that rewards students’ strategic ability to manage details of cultural knowledge and sociolinguistic content, including the following categories: (a) rhetorical organization; (b) content; (c) comparative point of view; and (d) interpretive substance. The article provides a model for the assessment of cultural competency (MACC), which can be adapted to assess students’ engagement with the culture represented in various materials.

THIS ARTICLE LOOKS AT SHIFTS IN FOURTHsemester foreign language (FL) students’ attitudes and perceptions about German culture in conjunction with testing their viewing of four episodes of the German television serial Lindenstrasse. Post viewings, the 69 participants wrote response papers addressing cultural patterns they observed in the television program. This study compares a sampling of randomly selected students’ papers, written after the first and the fourth viewings of different episodes. The goal of this research was to scrutinize possible changes in learners’ conceptual ability to draw inferences about cultural values—as they defined them— from plot features of a German television program The Modern Language Journal, 96, ii, (2012) DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-4781.2012.01335.x 0026-7902/12/209–233 $1.50/0  C 2012 The Modern Language Journal

and from patterns of behaviors writers observed and commented on. An assessment model was developed to identify and classify strategies about how students expressed cultural insights when writing about the televised episodes. That model encapsulates components of “cultural insights” that allow a quantification of rater analyses of qualitative differences in students’ observations. The categories in this assessment model for cultural competency reflect an interdisciplinary body of recent French and English theory that has fleshed out concepts of culture and language based on their anthropological, sociological, and discursive implications. Notably, cultural theorists such as Barthes (1968, 1990), Foucault (1972), Bourdieu (1991), Geertz (1973), and Fairclough (1989) share the assumption that language and culture are interdependent and implicated with concepts of power, individual agency, and identity. Concomitantly, research in

210 psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and semiotics, in conjunction with the advent of accessible media worldwide, has contributed to the realization that culture, language, and personal or group identities are dynamic, realized in a variety of cognitive processes and social acts that underlie strategies people use to interface with a culture. Such comprehensive understandings of culture are reflected in the recommendations and guidelines on the teaching of culture put forth in the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Language’s (ACTFL) Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century (2006) and the 2007 report “Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World” from the Modern Language Association (MLA). Both documents stress the interconnectedness of language and culture. Supporting these positions, many scholars involved in FL praxis and theory have written about the significance of culture in the language classroom (see, e.g., Byrnes, 1991; Kramsch, 1993, 1995, 2002; Scott & Huntington, 2002, 2007; Swaffar & Arens, 2005). Whereas research has been conducted on the recall and knowledge of FL cultural content (Crawford & McLaren, 2003; Herron, Dubreil, Cole, & Corrie, 1999, 2000; Herron & Hanley, 1992; Storme & Derakhshani, 2002) and analyses of sociocultural pragmatics (Halliday, 1977, 2002; Wierzbicka, 1997, 2003, 2006a, 2006b), few measurements and hence few studies exist that investigate patterns in students’ initial perceptions about another culture and whether extended exposure to authentic materials representing that culture changes or expands those perceptions (Wright, 2000). More specifically, despite the centrality of cultural studies espoused in the ACTFL Standards and the MLA report, the profession still lacks information about what kinds of learning actually result from classroom exposure to authentic materials produced by the FL under study, and what manifestations of cognitive processing might be assessed (beyond correctness of linguistic form and address, and of cultural facts like names and dates). As a result, some confusion persists about types of materials and approaches to learning about culture in an FL classroom; confusion that may well inhibit learning. Investigating this issue with regard to the study of culture, Chavez (2002) examined students’ and teachers’ expectations about acquiring cultural awareness in the FL classroom. She found that teachers failed to adequately communicate their approaches to cultural information to their students and that, consequently, students lacked

The Modern Language Journal 96 (2012) certainty about what they should be looking for and learning about. Chavez’s findings support the premise that both the learners’ and the course objectives have to be taken into account and rendered explicit if effective pedagogical decisions are to be made. In a similar vein, Menard-Warwick (2009) concluded from her research that although teachers often provide opportunities for students to investigate cultural issues, such a student-centered exploration of culture does not necessarily lead to what she calls interculturality. To address these problems in the study, the authors developed their assessment model in conjunction with guidelines given as assignment directions for a student response paper to be written after the viewing of a series of episodes from an authentic German-language television serial. The assessment scale paralleled those guidelines in specifying levels of achievement, and the grades correlated with them, to identify and guide possible changes in the writers’ perceptions about culture over the course of a college semester.

STUDY DESIGN The broader project from which this paper is drawn explored four questions.1 This report focuses on the data gleaned that address one of the study’s central research questions and one of its methodological problems: 1. How did viewing four episodes of a television serial about everyday life on a street in Munich, Germany affect the way learners wrote about German culture in their first and fourth response essays of the four that were assigned as homework after viewing each television segment?2 2. Could a scale be developed to assess students’ cognitive grasp of the FL television serial— to measure qualitative features of individual writers’ expressions that provide information about development in their cultural perceptions and inferences? To investigate this research question and discover a method for transforming such questions into potentially quantifiable data, a study was designed in which four fourth-semester Germanlanguage classes watched a German television program presented with the following sequence of tasks based on materials for support of their learning: (a) a preview in the form of a reading assignment: descriptions or pseudo-biographies of characters to be seen in the Lindenstrasse episode to be shown; (b) a 15-minute preview of the episode in class, with a short discussion of

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Judith Hammer and Janet Swaffar characters’ biographies and identification of them in an initial scene from each of the three segments of the episode; (c) a 30-minute viewing of the entire German-language episode without subtitles;3 (d) a homework assignment to write summary analyses of the episode for the next class hour and (e) a follow-up at the next class with an hour-long class discussion and review of students’ questions and perceptions about the episode and its cultural characteristics. This sequence of activities took place in the 4th, 7th, 11th, and 13th weeks of the semester.

USING A VIDEO SERIAL TO TEACH CULTURE Movies and television programs are frequently used as tools for learning about the second language culture because they illustrate its visual, verbal, and acoustic expression. Consequently, using filmic texts and their perceived benefits dovetail with the underlying assumptions of most semiotic models—they provide more redundant input that gives learners a greater chance to perceive patterns. Arey (1993) argued that reading the semiotics of a filmic text is inspiring and motivating to students. He pointed out that practicing to decipher the meaning of images and texts prepares students for upper-division literature classes. In consequence, film provides an “optimal language learning environment” (Kasper & Singer, 2001; see also Swaffar & Vlatten, 1997), a rich cultural environment (Dodds, 1997), a variety of authentic cultural situations and language use (Altman, 1989; Garza, 1991; Weakland, 1975), and appeals to cognitive and affective spheres (Fox, 1994; Lonergan, 1984; Straub, 2002). Thus far, however, research investigating whether classroom use of film has pedagogical advantages, what they may be, and how filmic materials can be used to teach social semiotics has been meager. A number of excellent articles describe the use of film in the FL classroom to practice listening, speaking, writing, and reading (Hennesey, 1995; Herron, Cole, York, & Linden, 1998; Herron, Corrie, Cole, & Henderson, 1999; Herron, Hanley, & Cole, 1995; Rifkin, 2002; Rose 1995; Secules, Herron, &Tomasello, 1992; Weyers, 1999). Yet overall, students’ analytical thinking about an FL culture and possible expansion of or changes in their attitudes toward the culture resulting from reading or viewing texts in the language they are studying have not been the focus of these studies.4 The present article will now address some of these dimensions.

PARTICIPANTS Students From the 74 enrolled students during the spring semester of 2007, 69 in four sections of fourth-semester German (GER 312L) agreed to participate in the study. All sections were of comparable size (between fifteen and twenty students). They used the same syllabus and met three times a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) in 50-minute sessions for 15 weeks. The class sessions all took place in classrooms with identical media consoles that facilitated the screening of the television program throughout the semester. The viewings and discussions of the television series, as well as students’ assignments for this study (such as the questionnaires and response papers), were integrated into the fourth-semester syllabus for standard class credit. Participating students’ native language was English, and all had either been placed into fourth-semester German through a placement examination or had gone through the regular progression from first- to fourth-semester German at the University of Texas at Austin.5 Instructors Of the graduate student instructors of these courses (called assistant instructors or AIs at the University of Texas at Austin), two were female and one was male. The two female teachers were German, and German was their native language. The male instructor, although Swiss, spoke German as his native language as well. All instructors had 3 or more years of experience teaching in the lower-division German curriculum of the Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Texas. The instructors’ training included a semester-long supervised teaching of German course as well as classroom visits each semester conducted by the Curriculum Coordinator. One of the two female instructors taught two fourth-semester sections. The other two teachers taught one section each. All instructors agreed to participate in the study of fourth-semester courses as designed and to have Lindenstrasse episodes incorporated into the fourth-semester curriculum. All instructors agreed that, with the pedagogical format prepared by the first author of this article, the 8 days of the semester and homework assignments devoted to the study Lindenstrasse would be of value for their students. It was agreed that grades for the response papers would be assigned by course instructors, who would correct them for morphosyntactic accuracy, and that, after the semester was over, uncorrected copies of the

212 essays would be assessed with different criteria by the researchers. Students were aware that results of this subsequent assessment would not affect their final grade for the course. Data Collection Instruments Lindenstrasse was chosen as the authentic text for this cultural study because it is a family serial, arguably a distinctly German genre, that first debuted in 1985 and is still a popular series, with new episodes developed as late as 2008. The serial revolves around the everyday experiences of several families living on Lindenstrasse, a downtown street in Munich. The program deals with a variety of current topics that most native speakers of German can be expected to know and have opinions about, such as immigration, HIV, or conflicts with bureaucracy or in the workplace. It short, it represents a variety of everyday problems dealt with by ordinary people in Germany. The three instructors of the four course sections were given lesson plans for classroom practices, and student participants received guidelines for writing about their cultural perceptions. These guidelines addressed questions raised in the pilot study. Students in that study voiced the same concerns as the subjects in the Chavez study discussed earlier. Despite the fact that study raters’ assessment of student essays’ cultural content would not affect their course grade, learners wanted to understand the research goals of the assignment and what concepts of culture the raters of these papers sought. In response to these concerns, semistructured directions for the response papers were employed for the main study. These guidelines asked students to identify main features of the content of the episodes in Lindenstrasse and to identify and explain any cultural features they saw manifested in various reactions of different characters to the events and behaviors depicted (see Appendix A). All these essays were to be written in German, and students were instructed not to use online translators or to receive external help. The goal of collecting the response papers was twofold. First, it was hoped they would reflect cultural issues students perceived as a result of watching Lindenstrasse. Second, papers that contained students’ personal reactions to the issues discussed in Lindenstrasse might reveal their initial horizons of expectation about German and U.S. culture, as well as the cultural topics addressed in the televised serial. Thus, a comparison of their initial and last papers might show conceptual and attitudinal changes that students expressed after

The Modern Language Journal 96 (2012) more extensive viewing. Possibly, students’ written responses might reveal whether they were able to observe more precisely, in the course of one semester, plot features of Lindenstrasse and whether they saw and understood the related values, attitudes, and behaviors suggested by the serial’s depiction of different ethnic, age, gender, and socioeconomic groups in Germany. To identify the presence or absence of such changes in students’ articulation and thinking style, a holistic scoring scale to assess students’ response papers was developed by the present authors and Katherine Arens; the scoring scale measurement will be discussed later. IMPLEMENTATION Instructions to Teachers and Students To regularize instructions, administration, and pedagogical uses of Lindenstrasse, including all pre-, during, and postviewing discussion activities, instructors were provided with the same lesson plans (see Appendix B). The first author of this study visited all classes to identify any variations or problems that might occur. In the main, the recommended procedures were followed consistently. These plans included activities, instructions about how to conduct those activities, the purpose and goal of the activities, and additional background information for instructors and students.6 Pre-Viewing Activities Students first read short biographies of the people appearing in the respective Lindenstrasse episode as a homework assignment. The subsequent class session started with groups of three or four students who reviewed what they recalled about these characters, prompted by a list of their names on the blackboard. This activity served as an advance organizer by introducing these characters as participants in situations and contexts within an episode. As noted previously, all Lindenstrasse viewings were in German and without English subtitles. After viewing, students were asked to write response papers to the episode as a homework assignment. The response papers were between 1.5 and 2 pages in length, written in German, and handed in at the outset of the following class session (see Appendix A). Postviewing Activities, Day 2 On the day after the initial viewing, all classes started with groups of three or four students who

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Judith Hammer and Janet Swaffar talked to each other for approximately 5 minutes about the cultural features they mentioned in their response papers. After that discussion, the group pooled its information and created cultural categories on the blackboard, and then used them to sort features from the episodes under appropriate headings.7 For example, if the cultural feature the students noted was circumcision of Muslims, then the category created was practices of Islam or religion. Students assigned themselves to a new discussion group according to the cultural feature written on the board they wanted to discuss. They were asked to use 15 to 20 minutes to consider their chosen topic, using discussion questions the instructor displayed on the classroom document camera (see Appendix A). The Assessment Scale A scale to provide a model for assessment of cultural competency (MACC) was developed to see whether an instrument designed to identify and diagnose students’ perceptual strategies could also measure whether learners exhibited an increased awareness of self and other in their written reflections on the cultural information they identified in the Lindenstrasse videos (see Appendix C). More specifically, the typologies that underlie that scale focused on ascertaining whether students were able to increase their capacity to observe possible trends, attitudes, or behaviors in the video that they would characterize as culturally similar or dissimilar to their expectations. The concepts at the basis of the rubrics define culture with reference to explicit language performance. They were derived with reference to the ACTFL’s Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century, understood as a set of possible learning outcomes linked to languagebased performance in cultural contexts. The Standards define these contexts as a set of five interlocking domains: communities, cultures, comparisons, communications, connections. Because the class reported on here was defined as language based and interested in cultural competence and the ability to process cultural information in patterns rather than in any specific content, these rubrics stressed the language base of performance, defined here as aspects of rhetorical organization and the elements of language necessary to manage them. The MACC scale for assessing differences in essay formulations was divided into four categories of accountability (a) rhetorical organization (the logical relationships among topics and plots of the

episode); (b) verifiable content (accurate replication of plot features and concrete information); (c) an identifiable writer point of view (distinguishing the point of view of the episode characters from that of the writer); and (d) interpretive substance (examples of inferential reasoning, showing how they drew conclusions on the basis of the concrete information). The scores for each category in the MACC’s grading scale emerged when raters identified and awarded points for the presence, partial presence, or absence of statements or chains of expressions that met the descriptions of the three to six rubrics identified for each of the four categories of accountability on the scale. These categories and the individual rubrics under them served as a guide to a holistic evaluation of the writing when they identified the relative presence or absence of the cognitive strategies students used to manage details both of cultural knowledge and of sociolinguistic content in the video episodes. Points achievable for each rubric ranged from one to three, with one reflecting an absence or lack of clarity in reflecting a rubric, two indicating that a rubric was partially expressed, and three an intelligibly articulated (but not necessarily linguistically correct) expression of a cognitive strategy in the MACC. To establish agreement between raters, comparisons were made on the basis of total scores awarded in the four categories rather than on individual scores awarded for the seventeen individual rubrics, with different kinds of cognitive activity reflected in each. Note that the cited illustrations, taken out of context, have been translated from the German. To compare the language use and strategies of a sample first and fourth essay, see Appendix D.

THE MODEL’S ASSESSMENT CRITERIA Category 1: Rhetorical Organization Assessing the linguistic dimension writers use involves measuring the degree to which they employ effective communication strategies. Whether writers can set and hold a position or a point of view about another culture, for example, will depend on the scope and accuracy of their comprehension and their capacity to produce sentences that convey their grasp of the materials heard, read, or viewed. Consequently, rhetorical organization was identified and defined as the coherence and intelligibility of language used to express ideas about culture in a written statement, as an essential rubric or component of any research

214 assessment about shifts in students’ cultural horizons. Thus, the measurement rewarded fundamental components in rhetoric: a dominant topic or argument framing the paper and the presence of subtopics related to that argument. For coherence, transitions and discourse connectors between sentences and paragraphs would also be assessed, as would the ways in which details from the video segment would illustrate the topic addressed. Such features were not taught specifically in conjunction with the Lindenstrasse project, but they were reviewed in course materials during the semester. The first rubric (Rubric 1) in this category of four strategies defines rhetorical organization and allows raters to award points on the basis of correlations between language and content. The first rubric awards points for simple rhetorical competence: for single or related sentences that present the main subject in each of the three episodes and the extent to which any supporting sentences at the outset of the essay identify the writer’s concept of the global issues and specific themes addressed in episodes of the television segment. The second rubric (Rubric 2) looks at the learner’s sustained engagement with the concepts identified in Rubric 1, rewarding subsequent reappearance of these themes, major arteries in the essay’s roadmap. In other words, the theme of this “topic sentence” has to reassert itself as a thread in subtopics throughout the essay, showing an attempt to argue a case across more than one sentence or clause boundary. To illustrate, an opening sentence such as “Lindenstrasse is a German soap opera that is very popular” could be awarded two points as a general topic sentence, but no more unless subsequent sentences linked that popularity to specific stories in the episode. If, for example, that statement were expanded in at least one of the following paragraphs by the explicit or implied assumption that the aspects of German life depicted and the chief features of the episodes’ segments are interesting to Germans, the writer would be awarded three points for Rubric 2, “sections of that essay each related to its major argument.” The textual form of these assertions in the students’ papers did not need to be elegant or all-inclusive to receive credit, since the rubrics reward content not grammatical correctness. A subsequent paragraph might start with the topic sentence: “Apparently lots of Germans watch a program that shows some Muslim traditions and a German woman who wants to marry a Muslim man.” This assertion suggests that the topic

The Modern Language Journal 96 (2012) “popularity” can be scored as developing the theme and potential argument “implications of popularity for the German viewing audience”— “lots of Germans watch . . . ” restates the assertion that such topics are relevant in Germany today. The rhetorical feature assessed in Rubric 2 is whether any part of the writing introduces subsequent topic sentences in subsequent paragraphs that link the popularity of Lindenstrasse to writers’ views about how German and, possibly, U.S. audiences might see religious differences or the dynamics of traditional and nontraditional relations depicted in the video segment. If the writer digressed midway through the essay or failed to link this initial focus to further segments of the essay, a point would be docked. The total absence of such thematic threading would yield only one point for this rubric. The third rubric (Rubric 3) marks, “transitions between phases of argument.” This rubric awards points for discourse markers such as “first we see,” “next,” “a very serious problem emerges when...”—words or phrases that convey to the reader the sequence of topical events or the importance the writer assigns to them. The fourth and last rubric (Rubric 4) in this measure of rhetorical organization looks at whether details from the source text are presented with referential clarity. In reference to the prospective Muslim wedding, for example, does the writer identify who is marrying whom and what friends and family think about it? This last subrubric rewards the degree to which “details from source text are subsumed to (sections of) the argument.” Although related in principle to the second category, “verifiable content,” the MACC’s designers focused here on the way essay details lend texture and depth to the main messages of a segment. If the writer’s argument is, for example, that Islamic traditions lead to confrontations between Germans of a non-Islamic background and their Islamic neighbors, then the essay needs to elaborate briefly about the reactions of other characters to a woman wearing a headscarf or having her 4-year-old boy circumcised. As with all rubrics in the scale, raters awarded three points for the presence, two points for a partial answer, and one point if such illustrations were absent. Category 2: Textually Verifiable Reference to Content If culture is to be learned about and understood, observed examples of that culture must be accurately comprehended and represented. Consequently, a rubric for content was developed to

Judith Hammer and Janet Swaffar measure whether writers recounted major and minor issues, facts, and situations accurately. Accurate distinctions between major and minor issues, facts, or situations become significant first steps in comparisons because they can forestall cultural generalizations or stereotyping. In this same vein, how sequences, chronology, and the relative relationships between events are replicated reflects accurate or inaccurate perceptions of data. Flawed inferences frequently rest on misconception of facts. As a related consideration, genre recognition was included in this rubric because genre influences the presentation and selection of factual information about a culture. The category of rubrics as a whole assesses the degree to which students comprehended situations and topics depicted in the television program. Designers wanted to look at how fully and accurately students recalled the program and described it. This segment of the scale was weighted twice as heavily as the other categories because content recognition establishes the basis for higher-order thinking about culture. Such thinking involves synthesizing text content and student background information into topics and analyzing them from different points of view. If students fail to give a correct account of the participants and issues presented in Lindenstrasse, or merely generalize without examining more closely the features of different people, places, events, and problems presented in the episodes, their inferential reasoning about culture suffers. To assess the basis for pitfalls, raters looked first at the degree to which writers understood and reported an episode’s situations and facts coherently. Did they, for example, note the connection and relation of the overarching and more important events in a segment? Was the topic “circumcision” related to details about the event with indications about who was invited, where the event took place, or the kinds of interactions that occurred between guests? For such appraisals of content articulation, rating considerations similar to those used in assessing rhetorical organization applied. For Rubric 1, descriptive generalizations without specifications did not suffice. For example, the correct assessment that “[t]his first story is about all the people involved in a ritual” would receive only one point if not supported by subsequent statements (“in this case...”) about the type of ritual or social issues pertaining to this event. In other words, if an observation remained inconclusive or failed to exemplify or amplify the learner’s management of the broader content of the video segment, it did not count for more than one point.

215 Alternatively, when students identified the segment features that illustrate the rituals previously described they received two points if they defined “ritual” or referred to events (“circumcision”), attitudes expressed (“the young boy was afraid”), or issues raised (“the real father’s rights”). If such additional, more detailed references characterized discussions of at least two of the major issues the student’s essay identified, it would receive three points for Rubric 1, “major issues/facts/situations from the source text accurately recounted.” In sum, the content reference for Rubric 2 awarded points for describing details of the major content in either a real-time or flashback sequence that replicated the original. Mentioning the fact that the non-Muslim fianc´ee must have her stepmother present when she meets her prospective Muslim in-laws, or the fact that she prepares an extensive dinner in her own kitchen, speaks to the formality and family significance of the betrothal—a clear specification of the basic situation “ritual” that elaborates about a “Muslim ritual in Germany.” Not all, but at least two or three, of such details had to be found in the students’ description of a particular episode from the video in order to garner three points. Content reference Rubric 3 asked raters to assess how the student essay weighted such major and minor issues—whether the writer recognized the difference between super- and subordinate features. Three-point ratings did not depend on comprehensive attention to all factors in the text, simply to evidence that the writer linked details to overarching issues. For example, the fact that the fianc´ee was so preoccupied with cooking dinner that her young son felt neglected speaks to the problem of new priorities introduced when new traditions are adopted. The essay that consistently linked such details about the son’s dilemma to the major topic “two different traditions” received three points for this rubric. Conversely, an exegesis about parental neglect that digressed from the content of the episode would receive no more than two points, such being an issue imposed on the text, that is, extraneous, although not completely alien to it. Content Rubric 4 addressed the essays’ use of events, nouns, adjectives, and verbs as semantic representations of particular features—whether the writers’ choices avoided distorting or stereotyping events and people. As with all rubrics for this level, the raters penalized inaccuracy. Thus, for example, a reference to an unmarried mother as “immoral,” with two or three other such judgmental adjectives occurring in reference to other people or events, would cost at least one point if

216 such judgments failed to represent statements in the video segment. Content Rubric 5 is distinguishable from Rubric 4, an explicit judgment, when writers made imprecise or inaccurate inferences. Assertions such as “everyone dislikes this girl” or “the money was stolen” were penalized by one point if only one person disliked the girl in question or thought that a sum freely given had been obtained illegally. Rubric 6, the last piece of the content category, rewarded observations about how the genre (whether considered as a soap opera or a family serial) influences the way content is presented in Lindenstrasse. Only two points were awarded if students simply mentioned that the television program was, for example, a soap opera (“Soap operas are interesting but they aren’t correct [i.e., accurate representations of society]”). For three points, students were expected to exemplify an assertion, by considering the impact of the genre with elaborations such as “viewers expect more dramatic events and exaggerated behaviors.” Such an elaboration requires an indication of how genre affects what is observable and suggests that the writer interrogated the episode’s content in terms of its genre. Category 3: Comparative Point of View The third set of rubrics focused on whether student writers recognized similarities, but also could distinguish between features of the C2, or target culture, and those of the C1. In other words, did writers make connections or comparisons with their own culture when reflecting on features of the German culture they saw represented in Lindenstrasse. Here, recall and discussion of particular information is not at issue; instead, raters rewarded the writers’ ability to identify behaviors, values, and interactive patterns in the video segment that struck them as anticipated, new, or different from their expectations, or how writers assessed what they saw as stereotypical. The four rubrics in this category rewarded observations students made about their own culture, the target culture, or vis-`a-vis the target culture. The first and second subrubrics, “source and target cultures clearly differentiated where appropriate” and “clearly equated where appropriate,” assessed whether, on the basis of their cultural origin, writers attributed to themselves similar or different expectations than those made when they commented on events and behaviors in Lindenstrasse. Thus, when writers noted that the apartments depicted are relatively small, did they also

The Modern Language Journal 96 (2012) observe overtly that U.S. apartments for comparable socioeconomic groups tend to be somewhat larger? In contrast to the content assessment, here the scoring did not depend solely on the accuracy of the observation, but on whether the writer identified a particular comparability or contrast between both cultures in terms of economic, religious, or social factors about which the writer made explicit references. If several such observations occurred in an essay, the statements would be awarded three points if factually correct; two points if the raters found them inaccurate or flawed—if, for example, the writer assumed that most Turks are Christians. In other words, as long as the writer expressed a point of view and awareness of a cultural issue, partial credit was granted. The reasoning behind allowing partial credit for factually flawed comparisons is that learning to draw inferences about cultures is a process of learning how assumptions underlying inferences affect subsequent interpretations and conclusions. For the scale to serve as a feedback or diagnostic process for teachers and students, raters found it essential to reward in part what may otherwise be considered a factually flawed assertion (e.g., most Turks are Christians) so as to encourage the students’ effort to make an inference, but at the same time point out potential pitfalls for observers of another culture—the difference between informed presumptions about the FL culture and flawed inferences that are based on inadequate information about another culture’s way of dealing with ostensibly similar issues. If presumptions in an essay are based on cultural facts not found overtly in the textual material students work with, the error is attributable to student background rather than course content. Accuracy of course or text content has been assessed in the category “referential accuracy”; these point-of-view rubrics diagnose indices about awareness of one’s own point of view versus that of others, perspectives that constitute the student’s basis for comparing two cultures. Point of view Rubrics 3 and 4 look at how writers actively “interrogate stereotypes,” how and whether they position themselves either as outsiders within their own culture (Rubric 3) or as a surrogate insider observing the foreign culture (Rubric 4). Given the brevity of these essays— on average between 600 and 750 words—both raters agreed to grant two points for one observation and three points for two or more. Thus, two or more outsider comments such as “With their public transportation systems, I guess older Germans can get to places easier than older

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Judith Hammer and Janet Swaffar Americans” or “I have always thought of Germans as Christians, but Lindenstrasse definitely shows people who have different religions” were credited as evidence of awareness about stereotypes in one’s own culture. Similarly, students who expressed concerns or criticism in terms of the episode (Rubric 4: “source text clearly positioned within source culture”) might receive points for concerns about a German depicted in the serial who denigrated a Muslim neighbor. The difference between Rubrics 3 and 4, then, is that identifying judgmental behaviors or views depicted in the episode represents a different locus for interrogation of stereotypes than does an overtly U.S. viewpoint. Category 4: Interpretive Substance The last rubric draws on features of the comparisons and communities Standards, the two that are cognitively the most complex. To communicate effectively across communities, a writer negotiates transcultural understanding responsibly. That negotiation process reflects awareness of Self and Other where appropriate, an awareness that involves knowledge of such complexities as accurate representations of differences in language and behavior for class or gender. It also reflects insight into where two cultures can be viewed as having parallel structures, awareness of stereotypes from one’s own culture, and whether information from an FL text reflects stereotypes. For sophisticated comparisons, writers must be able to interrogate clich´es in their own thinking as well. Significantly, such writers hypothesize about how a single instance may or may not reflect a broader pattern of behavior or attitudes. It is at this point that writers are poised to interpret transcultural phenomena and their implications. This category looks at what broader inferences or implications writers saw as resulting from their analyses—conclusions based on accurate replication of content and the visual and verbal behaviors they saw as significant in the television episode. To gain three points in any of these rubrics, writers needed to provide the basis for their conclusions by referring accurately and with some precision to behaviors and attitudes they identified in the video episode. This category thus points to synthetic knowledge—to the writer’s ability to move beyond the literal or mechanical and manage an argument, probably by substantiating the argument with concrete data. Rubric 1, “draws conclusions beyond description of parallels,” rewards substantiated infer-

ences and penalizes unfounded generalizations. Thus, concluding statements such as “[t]he behavior of people in the show is typically German... mostly conservative” lost a point as an unsubstantiated generalization, whereas the comment “[i]n ‘Lindenstrasse,’ many Germans seemed to accept Turks as members of German society, inviting them to social events and intermarrying” qualified as the writer’s substantiated conclusion. Rubric 2, “interrogates clich´es/stereotypes in source text,” looks for statements that indicate writers are reflecting about what they see as the prejudices or too-facile generalizations exhibited in the video episode itself. This rubric proved to be the least frequent one that raters noted in the essays. One of the exceptions was the statement “Muslim religion plays an important role in this episode, but the people concerned didn’t talk about the religions ideas, just circumcision. Islam is complex and this sequence treated the religion in black and white terms.” This writer positioned her comment as an impartial critical viewer rather than formulated as a criticism as a U.S. viewer. Rubric 3, “interrogates clich´es/stereotypes in own thinking,” had more frequent exemplification in the papers scored. Writers mentioned their surprise about seeing Germany as a multicultural nation. Some criticized the United States for its lack of readily available public transportation systems, while others were impressed with the personal interest a doctor in Lindenstrasse took in his patient and reconsidered their prejudice against socialized medicine. Where only an implied insight was inferable, for example, praise for the doctor, but no overt connection to comparative medical practices, the writer received two points. When the observation resulted in an explicit confrontation with the writer’s presumptions, three points were awarded. RESPONSE PAPER RATINGS To establish whether the foregoing scale could recover and in some measure quantify the qualitative differences among student response papers, sampling was done from those essays written after the initial viewing of Lindenstrasse in the fourth class week and those written by these same students after the final viewing in the 12th week of class. Two raters scored a group of essays independently and then worked together to establish a mutual understanding of how to use the criteria to rank differences from one to three. After about 2 hours spent discussing the basis for variation in assessment of the four categories described previously, raters were able to undertake subsequent

218 grading independently with no more than a 10% difference in rankings, indicating a 90% independent agreement in applying the scale. In evaluating the students’ statements, raters discovered that although they had weighted individual categories somewhat differently, their cumulative scores under the four categories proved to be within one point of difference. Consequently, it was only when the total scores in categories were not within 95% of each other that raters addressed variations in rubric assessment within categories by comparing their readings of how an essay dealt with individual rubric features. QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF RESPONSE PAPERS Thirty-two response papers written in the 4th and 13th week of class were analyzed. To make this selection, two women and two men from each class (a total of sixteen students) were randomly chosen from the sixty-nine students in the four classes that participated in this study. The MACC scale assessments indicated that these students’ written responses improved between the 4th and 13th weeks of the semester. That improvement occurred to varying degrees with different writers and with respect to different rubrics. Together, the sixteen students improved most in the categories “rhetorical organization” (35 points or an average gain of 31%), “textually verifiable reference to content” category (with a 53-point or 28.7% average gain), and “point of view/comparative cultural competence” (with a 30-point or 27.5% average gain). The notably smaller average gain was in “interpretive substance,” which increased by only 19 points, an 18.2% average gain. Overall, students’ average score on all categories increased by 26.5%, reflecting a total of 137 points. Table 1 provides totals of the sixteen students’ scores on their first and fourth response papers with respect to the scale’s four categories of rubrics. See Appendix E for individual scores in each category, with total scores and averages noted in descending order. Some caveats with regard to these results must be noted: The MACC scoring attempted to provide a holistic assessment of culture’s multiple cognitive and linguistic domains under a single umbrella. As such, the domains and the weighting of those domains are subject to caveats inherent in any effort to put theory into pragmatic practice. In discussing the findings, no claims can be made for more than inferential findings, since the authors’ measurement instrument, and results, would first have to be subjected to replication studies. That

The Modern Language Journal 96 (2012) TABLE 1 Assessment Scores on First and Fourth Essays by Category

Rhetorical Organization Content References Point of View Interpretive Substance

Essay 1

Essay 4

Possible Points on Scale × 16

114

149

192

184

237

288

110 105

140 124

192 192

said, the assessment differences in these preliminary data suggest that changes in the cultural horizons occurred in the majority of students whose papers were rated. That finding raises the possibility that this progress may be measurable with a comprehensive cultural assessment model. In this context, it should be emphasized that progress was not consistent for all students across all categories. Although all but one student made progress in at least one of the Categories 1 and 2, degrees of gain varied from one to eight points. The individual score comparisons in descending order found in Appendix E reveal to what degree the score gains and losses in different categories varied among individual students. Two writers, Andrew and Corey, had the most consistent high gains in all categories. In Category 3, Point of View, five students’ scores were flat or slightly lower by a range of one to three points, and in Category 4, Inferential Reasoning, three of the fourth essays had no gains overall, one lost three points and the individual who lost points overall lost six in the category for inferential reasoning. This lower-than-average performance may reflect a developmental stage at which a student becomes aware of differences without necessarily being able to manage them actively. That said, the descending order in the Difference column for Total Points (Appendix E) reveals a balance of cut-off points between sampled students into five A to F ranges usually considered desiderata for tests. The almost bell-shaped pattern speaks only to progress as measured by the MACC: Four of the students in the bottom quadrant of difference had unusually high scores in their first essay and made minimal improvement. In the case of the essay with the highest negative score, this rank is in comparison with the initial essay, which had achieved the second highest score. This example suggests that, if used to measure

Judith Hammer and Janet Swaffar improvement over the course of a semester, the MACC may have diagnostic value. All essays’ greater success in the categories of rhetoric and content than in assuming a particular point of view or drawing cultural inferences is not surprising, given what is known about relative difficulty in cognitive processing. As previously noted, perceptions of content are cognitively managed through recognition and written reproduction of what has been comprehended. These cognitive processes are generally considered by psycholinguists to be less demanding than the analytic and synthetic reasoning necessary to assume a point of view or to engage in inferential reasoning (e.g., as encompassed in Bloom’s Taxonomy [1956] and its subsequent modifications [see Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001; Marzano & Kendall, 2007]). True, reproducing recognition in a FL requires cognitive synthesis from writers, but as the video story was introduced and heard in German, translation would itself be a factor in essays, whether written in German or English. The authors also assume that the progress students made during the course of the semester doubtless contributed to improved competencies in their expanded cultural perceptions expressed in later viewing of Lindenstrasse. By the same token, the four repetitions of the viewing and postviewing procedures also presumably enhanced later, higher-than-average performance as measured by the MACC. At the same time, because the scale is designed to assess learners’ reasoning and conceptual management, it rewards abilities less likely to be measured when a FL course focuses more on language acquisition in and of itself. On the MACC scale, a level of language ability is the basis for comprehension and oral or written performance and, as such, it mattered, but probably accurate usage and word choice weighed less predominantly than is usually the case in the intermediate-level FL class. Consequently, this research raises the question: Should college-level FL programs reward students for being able to communicate insights about what they learn from their exposure to FL materials, apart from their linguistic abilities per se? SUMMARY This study allows for several tentative findings. First, it revealed that in the raters’ sample, a majority of students’ cultural horizons appeared to be broadened during the course of one semester when watching and discussing Lindenstrasse. Most learners expanded their reading and articulating

219 of images and cultural content they viewed in the televised text. For most, repeated exposure to the video led to increased awareness and ability to articulate a variety of cultural similarities and differences identified in the model for assessing cultural competencies. The study’s second finding indicates that it may be possible to look at qualitative differences in learner perceptions about culture by quantifying strategies (discourse, social, cognitive) writers used to identify cultural phenomena. That said, a number of important qualifications must be made with regard to these findings and the model outlined here. First, other types and selections of materials and different presentational trajectories might reveal different patterns of progress or, indeed, failure to gain additional insights into manifestations of culture. Second, the model itself will have to be studied and replicated under similar conditions to see if it can be verified and be considered a reliable tool for assessing students’ perceptions of texts produced in different formats and genres— the specific problems in different texts may require different specialized rubrics under the general categories. The authors’ assumption that materials produced for native speakers of the FL studied are preferable to those written for pedagogical purposes might also be tested. In short, although used here as an instrument for assessing student progress over the course of one semester, the model has possible applications and variants for longitudinal studies and use among different FL students at different learning levels and institutions. The work presented is drawn from the first author’s larger study; additional data analysis and the limitations of those results are discussed in Hammer (2008). In this article, the authors focused on the cognitive processes revealed in essays in which students were asked to make inferences about social systems represented in a family video series. The process employed for identifying the various strategies used, the MACC scale, was designed to pinpoint the discrete discursive, social, and cognitive abilities of postsecondary students. These findings cannot reflect the cognitive work of children or secondary school children. Preadolescents and adolescents would not be in a position to utilize several of the strategies found in essays produced by fourth-semester college students or at least not to the extent demonstrated in the essays discussed. These caveats impinge on both the pedagogical and assessment implications of the rubric-based model presented here. If employed in further

220 research studies or pedagogical implementations, a variety of modifications would doubtless occur. It should be emphasized, then, that regardless of future applications of the model described in this article, the premise behind its construction and application in this article has been to open a wider discussion about assessments of FL students’ perceptions about culture and other content areas. Assessment for this realm has become essential if the profession is to responsibly account for these students’ “advanced foreign language capacities” (Norris, 2006, p. 167) and their translingual and transcultural competence (MLA Report, 2007, pp. 3–4). In other words, in this era of transition in the status and praxis of FL programs in the United States, FL study’s critical need is to assess student performance in those domains the profession sees as its raison d’ˆetre and, at present, cultural studies have been situated at the heart of that enterprise.

NOTES 1 For a full account of the study and its ramifications, see Hammer (2008). 2 This question, #1 in the original study, asks: Would students first and last response essays reveal differences in the way students organized their ideas, recalled content, identified their writer position on events viewed, or identified more of their implications? The design’s second question asked about the effects of the use of English or German in discussion; the third question inquired about difference in classroom pedagogy: What did protocols of discussion sessions reveal about facets of teacher and/or student participation that could shed light on findings concerning the first and last response paper? The fourth question linked qualitative and quantitative data, asking: Did any of the background factors identified in the pre- and poststudy questionnaire designed for this research project emerge as significant variables and, if so, did these factors correspond to changes or absence of change assessed in students’ response papers? 3 One of the issues explored in a pilot study was whether to show a part of an episode of the television series (i.e., 15 minutes) or an entire episode. Therefore, on one day during the 2nd week, students watched 15 minutes of a 30-minute episode without interruption. In the 3rd and 4th weeks of the course, students viewed the second episode in its entirety. After watching the second episode, students were asked to report on their preferences about seeing a single segment versus seeing an entire episode. There was virtually unanimous consensus that students preferred to watch episodes in full length. They reported that since each episode consisted of at least three storylines involving different people, settings, and events, they would understand the storylines better if they had the opportunity to see more than

The Modern Language Journal 96 (2012) a couple of minutes of each plot. Students also noted that watching whole episodes better contextualized the different stories and led to a more connected and satisfying viewing experience, especially since the action and the solution of a conflict within each story was often protracted in order to build up and prolong the viewer’s suspense. As a result, students in the main study watched all episodes in full length. 4 Studies by Herron and Hanley (1992) and Herron, Dubreil, Cole, and Corrie (1999, 2000) look at student learning about culture. However, their research does not explore whether students had increased their ability to recognize cultural patterns in presented information, modified initial perceptions, or were able to generate inferences based on it. See also the work of Scott and Huntington (2002, 2007) regarding genre and resulting cultural perceptions. 5 The authors thank Professor Zsuzsanna Abrams, Curriculum Coordinator of the Lower Division Program, for her generous assistance in and suggestions for implementing this project in its formative stages. 6 Students used information available on the Lindenstrasse Internet Web site (www.Lindenstrasse.de). This Web page contains characters’ biographies that identify who the characters are and the relations between them. The biographies also referred to past events that had led the characters to their current positions and situations, and that were referred to in the television episode. Each biography also contained a picture of the character. These biographies were available on the blackboard sites of all fourth-semester German classes. 7 In two of the four classes, these in-class reviews were conducted in English. Both the English and German group discussions followed the same format in both learning conditions. While a small degree of performance difference favored the English-language classes, the general trends reported in this article were consistent for all four classes. For a complete analysis of findings, see Hammer (2008, ch. 6).

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Judith Hammer and Janet Swaffar Bloom, B. S. (Ed.). (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals. Handbook 1: Cognitive domain. New York: McKay. Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power . Cambridge: Polity in association with Basil Blackwell. Byrnes, H. (1991). Reflections on the development of cross-cultural communicative competence in the foreign language classroom. In B. F. Freed (Ed.), Foreign language acquisition research and the classroom (pp. 205–218). Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Company. Chavez, M. (2002). We say “culture” and students ask “what?”: University students’ definitions of foreign language culture. Die Unterrichtspraxis, 35, 129– 140. Crawford, L. M., & McLaren, P. (2003). A critical perspective on culture in the second language classroom. In D. L. Lange & R. M. Paige (Eds.), Culture as the core: Perspectives on culture in second language learning (pp. 127–157). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing. Dodds, D. (1997). Using film to build writing proficiency in a second-year language class. Foreign Language Annals, 30, 140–147. Fairclough, N. (1989). Language and power . New York: Longman. Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge (A. M. Sheridan, Trans.). New York: Pantheon Books. Fox, R. F. (1994). Introduction. In R. F. Fox (Ed.), Images in language, media and mind (pp. ix–xiii). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Garza, T. (1991). Evaluating the use of captioned video materials in advanced foreign language learning. Foreign Language Annals, 24, 239–248. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays. New York: Basic Books. Halliday, M. A. K. (1977). Text as semantic choice in social contexts. In T. A. van Dijk & J. S. Petoefi (Eds.), Grammars and descriptions: Studies in text theory and text analysis (pp. 176–225). New York: de Gruyter. Halliday, M. A. K. (2002). Linguistic studies of text and discourse. New York: Continuum. Hammer, J. E. (2008). Culture via television: Investigating the effects of a German television serial on the perceptions of fourth-semester German language classes. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Texas at Austin. Hennessey, J. M. (1995). Using foreign films to develop proficiency and to motivate the foreign language student. Foreign Language Annals, 28, 116–120. Herron, C. A., Cole, S. P., York, H., & Linden, P. (1998). A comparison study of student retention of foreign video: Declarative versus interrogative advance organizer. Modern Language Journal , 82, 237–247. Herron, C. A., Corrie, C., Cole, S. P., & Henderson, P. (1999). Do prequestioning techniques facilitate the comprehension of French video? French Review, 72, 1076–1090. Herron, C. A., Dubreil, S. P., Cole, S., & Corrie, C. (1999). The effectiveness of a video-based curricu-

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APPENDIX A Directions for Students’ Response Papers

r r r

Bitte auf deutsch! Bitte auf dem Computer schreiben! Bitte mindestens 1,5 Seiten!

1. Briefly summarize what you have seen! No more than 5 sentences!!! 2. Provide at least five more paragraphs about the following: a. What are the social and cultural topics and issues that are portrayed? Please describe as many as possible. b. What other cultural aspects did you recognize in the episode (e.g., people’s behaviors, patterns of everyday life, conflict solving strategies, etc.)? c. What is your personal reaction towards the issues discussed in the episode? Did you expect such topics to be part of German culture? Do you think that this is representative of German culture? Does it help you to understand German culture better? Does it make you like German culture better? d. What cultural similarities and differences to your own culture did you recognize? APPENDIX B Instructors’ Lesson Plans Lesson Plan, Viewing 1—February 7, 2007—Das Eheversprechen Before class Write down the names of the characters on the board. Keep groups of characters together in the following way → 1) Lisa & Murat, 2) Iffi, Jan & Momo, 3) Gabi & Andi, 4) Elena, Vasily & Julian. Inform students that it is important that they stay on task and work fast during the previewing activities since the episodes are 30 minutes long and since you have to accomplish quite a bit before watching LS. 00–04 Ask students to come to the board and to write down (in bullet-point style) important information about the characters in German. (They can use their homework for this activity.)

Judith Hammer and Janet Swaffar 05–10

11–13

14–17

18–19

20–50

50

223

Go over what they wrote down for each group of characters → read what they wrote and make sure everybody understands it (activity serves as an advance organizer by introducing the characters and their situations and contexts within the episode). Show the beginning of the first storyline → start of the episode, where Iffi and Jan are lying in bed up to when Iffi gets up to look after the baby and the camera shows a close-up of Jan’s face (about 1 min). BEFORE you show the sequence, ask students to observe 1) who is involved, 2) what the atmosphere of the situation and the mood of the characters is, 3) what is the overall problem or topic. Do not spend too much time analyzing the sequence, just make sure students know what is going on. Have students report back. Show the beginning of the second storyline → next scene (first scene of Murat and Lisa), about 2 minutes. BEFORE you show the sequence, ask students to observe 1) who is involved and 2) what Murat’s and Lisa’s discussion is about → make sure they understand that first they talk about a newspaper article involving a real-life event about a Kurdish family and that they then talk about their engagement dinner and that Lisa is nervous about it (Lisa meeting Murat’s parents). Have students report back. Show the beginning of the third story line → Elena and Vasily arguing about a new stove and money, almost 1 minute.. BEFORE you show the sequence, ask students to observe 1) who is involved and 2) what the conflict might be (Elena is upset at Vasily’s behavior towards Mary and Elena needs a new stove for her kitchen but Vasily says he has no money...). Have students report back. r Inform students that they will now watch the whole episode and that they are supposed to observe and make notes of cultural issues and aspects they see while watching. No specific guidelines or handouts are provided for this activity. They should take notes of everything they find worthwhile mentioning. r The first frame after the credits usually shows the title of the episode. Pause the episode right there and ask students about the meaning of the title and how it refers to one of the situations/storylines of the episode (Murat and Lisa in this case). This should be done very briefly—don’t discuss anything just make sure they know what it means and to which people/storyline it might refer to. r Pause when Vasily and Julian talk to each other while Vasily is fixing the stove (about 7.5 minutes into the show). Make sure students know what they talk about → the “deal” is that Julian invests Vasily’s money so that Vasily can tell Mary that he is bankrupt. Also, point out that later in the episode Vasily asks Julian to become his business associate (Teilhaber ) in his restaurant, around the 24th–25th minute). Hand out directions for response papers and ask students to stick to those directions. Remind students that response papers are due on Friday. Even if they don’t show up to class they have to email them to you. Also remind them that they are NOT allowed to use online translators.

All activities are supposed to be in German. Reihenfolge der Szenen am Anfang der Episode: 1. Iffi and Jan in bed → show 2. Murat and Lisa having breakfast → show 3. Iffi, Jan and Antonia → don’t show 4. Elena und Vasily → show

224

The Modern Language Journal 96 (2012)

Lesson Plan, Viewing 2—February 28, 2007—Pr¨ufungsangst Time 0–10

Activity

r Show the pictures of the characters relevant to today’s episode (use the biographies I sent to you and which your students used for their homework). Show the first pics (of Helga, Erich, Lea and Marion) and have students report about the characters (they can use their homework for this activity). r When you talk about Lea, please explain what a Gymnasium is and that Lea “only” goes to a Realschule

r After 4 years of elementary school students get a recommendation from their teacher which continuing school they should attend in the future.

r Parents have the choice to disregard the recom-

Purpose/what students should learn from this activity Activity serves as an advance organizer by introducing the characters and their situations and contexts within the episode. Please make sure students know all of this at the end of the activity. Try using some of the words from the biographies I sent to you (e.g., Ehrgeiz), so that students might be able to recognize those words while watching the TV show. Students should know what a Gymnasium and what a Realschule is. You can mention Hauptschule, but for the sake of time and since it is not relevant in our context, don’t explain too much!

mendation, but most parents go with it.

r Students can at any time switch from Realschule

10–11 11–14

to Gymnasium and vice versa if their grades are good enough. Or they might be urged to leave the Gymnasium if their academic performance is very poor. Or you can first finish up Realschule (including 10th grade) and then do grade 11, 12, and 13 at a Gymnasium. r You can only go to a university if you have a Gymnasium graduation diploma. r All of this describes the mainstream Bavarian school system. School systems slightly vary from state to state. r Continue with the next character or group of characters. → Please, focus on the important information (e.g., what is going on in those characters’ lives right now, which country they are from, etc.) and don’t spend too much time on not so important information (e.g., when exactly they were born, etc.). Show the title of the episode (pause the video when the title appears clarify what it means. Show the first storyline → Helga, Erich and Lea in the kitchen. It is the very beginning of the episode (a little more than 1 minute). BEFORE you show the sequence, ask students to observe 1) who is involved, 2) what the overall problem or issue is Don’t spend too much time analyzing the sequence, just make sure students know what is going on. Have students report back.

Answer: Lea is nervous and eager to get to the “Probeunterricht fu¨ rs Gymnasium.” Helga and Erich can’t understand Lea’s eagerness. They tell her that it is not that important.

225

Judith Hammer and Janet Swaffar Time

Activity

Purpose/what students should learn from this activity

14–19

Show the second storyline → Dr. Dressler und Jack. Immediately follows the first storyline (little more than 2 min.) BEFORE you show the sequence, ask students to observe 1) ho is involved and 2) hat Jack’s and Dr. Dressler’s discussion is about Have students report back. Show the third storyline → Irina, Urszula und Christian. Immediately follows the second storyline (45 sec.) BEFORE you show the sequence, ask students to observe 1) ho is involved and 2) hat the issue or problem is Have students report back. r Inform students that they will now watch the whole episode and that they are supposed to observe and make notes of cultural issues and aspects they see while watching. No specific guidelines or handouts are provided for this activity. They should take notes of everything they find worthwhile mentioning. r Encourage students, tell them it is ok if they don’t understand everything. r Don’t rewind but just continue to play the episode without interruptions where you stopped it after the third storyline. r Hand out directions for response papers and ask students to stick to those directions. r Remind students that response papers are due on Friday. Even if they don’t come to class they have to email them to you. r Also remind them that they are NOT allowed to use online translators

Dr. Dressler wants Jack to think about her future. He is not willing to support her not doing anything. She has no clue what she wants to do. He suggests that she does some social work. She tells him that he should mind his own business since he doesn’t do anything but listen to operas all day long. Urszula and Christian are concerned about the stalker’s calls for Irina. But Irina couldn’t care less, she just cares about the green sweater she can’t find in her closet.

19–22

22–48

48–50

All activities are supposed to be in German. Reihenfolge der Szenen am Anfang der Episode: 1. Helga, Lea und Erich in der K¨uche (a little more than 1 minute) 2. Jack und Dr. Dressler (little more than 2 minutes) 3. Irina, Paula und Christian (about 45 seconds)

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Lesson Plan, Viewing 3—March 28, 2007—Die Hand Gottes Time

Activity

0–10

r Show the pictures of the characters relevant

10–11 11–14

14–17

to today’s episode (use the biographies I sent to you and which your students used for their homework). Show the first picture (of Anna and Hans) and have students report about the characters (they can use their homework for this activity). r Please make sure they understand that Hans was married to Helga and that they have grown-up children (Marion and Klaus). That might be important because Marion has a fair amount of air time in this episode. r Please, also make sure students understand that Anna and Hans’ youngest son Martin (M¨urfel) has Down-Syndrome and that he was admitted to an Integrationsschule in Munich. r More info on Integrationsschulen: http://de. wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrationsklasse. r Also when talking about Hans, please make sure that students know that the episode was broadcast last summer during the World Cup, and that Hans has two tickets he is willing to give to his friends/Stammtischbr¨uder . However, only the winner of his quiz/test gets them. r Continue with the next character or group of characters. → Please, focus on the important information (e.g., what is going on in those characters’ lives right now, which country they are from, etc.) and don’t spend too much time on less important information (e.g., when exactly they were born, etc.). Show the title of the episode (pause the video when the title appears clarify what it means. Show the first storyline → Anna and Hans in the bathroom. It is the very beginning of the episode (a little more than 1 minute). BEFORE you show the sequence, ask students to observe 1) what Anna wants to do tonight, 2) what Hans wants to do tonight 3) How Anna likes Hans’ idea Do not spend too much time analyzing the sequence, just make sure students know what is going on. Have students report back. Show the second storyline → Marion, Nina, Klaus. Immediately follows the first storyline (little more than 1 min.) BEFORE you show the sequence, ask students to observe 1) who is involved and what people’s relationship is 2) what the atmosphere is, what the problem is 3) what they are doing Have students report back.

Purpose/what students should learn from this activity Activity serves as an advance organizer by introducing the characters and their situations and contexts within the episode. Please make sure students know all of this at the end of the activity.

Answer: Anna wants to go to the Biergarten. Hans is still administering the soccer quiz with his friends to see who will get his tickets for one of the games. Anna is not exactly thrilled that his friends are coming over tonight again to talk about soccer.

Marion is Klaus’ sister and his wife’s (Nina) friend. Nina took the morning off so that she, Klaus, and Marion can have a nice breakfast together before Marion leaves Munich to go to Frankfurt/Oder to start her new job/life there. Marion is not hungry, she just wants to forget everything that happened during the last couple of weeks → Alex leaving her and then appearing again and wanting her back

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Activity

Purpose/what students should learn from this activity

17–20

Show the third storyline → Mary and Nikos – immediately follows the second storyline (about 1 min.) BEFORE you show the sequence, ask students to observe 1) who is involved and 2) what they read in the newspapers 3) what is the overall problem Have students report back. r Inform students that they will now watch the whole episode and that they are supposed to observe and make notes of cultural issues and aspects they see while watching. No specific guidelines or handouts are provided for this activity. They should take notes of everything they find worthwhile mentioning. r Encourage students, tell them it is ok if they don’t understand everything. r Don’t rewind but just continue to play the episode without interruptions where you stopped it after the third storyline. r Hand out directions for response papers and ask students to stick to those directions.. r Remind students that response papers are due on Friday. Even if they don’t come to class they have to email them to you. r Also remind them that they are NOT allowed to use online translators

Mary is unemployed, desperately looking for a job. Vasily, Nikos’ father, refuses to pay child support and to pay the money Mary is supposed to get from him for having been his wife. Mary is having financial difficulties. She is currently staying with Nikos at Rosi Koch’s place.

20–48

48–50

All activities are supposed to be in German. Reihenfolge der Szenen am Anfang der Episode: 1. Anna and Hans (a little more than 1 minute) 2. Marion (a little more than 1minute) 3. Mary and Nikos (a little more than 1 minute)

Lesson Plan, Viewing 4—April 18, 2007—Bruder Jakob Time

0–8

Activity

r

Show the pictures of the characters relevant to today’s episode (use the biographies I sent to you and which your students used for their homework). Show the first picture and have students report about the characters (they can use their homework for this activity). The students already know some of the characters, but it might still be helpful to review how they are related to each other and what their current opinions on certain issues are.

Purpose/what students should learn from this activity Activity serves as an advance organizer by introducing the characters and their situations and contexts within the episode. Please make sure students know all of this at the end of the activity.

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Purpose/what students should learn from this activity

r Continue with the next character or

8–9

9–13

13–16

group of characters. → Please, focus on the important information (e.g., what is going on in those characters’ lives right now, which country they are from, etc.) and don’t spend too much time on less important information (e.g., when exactly they were born, etc.). r Please, make sure they remember that Lisa’s son Paul is not Murat’s son and that Murat is Kurdish and thus Muslim. Make sure they know that Lisa wants to raise Paul as a Muslim as well and that he is going to have his circumcision. Mention that most German men are not circumcised unless they are Jewish, Muslim or have to have the procedure done for medical reasons. r With Jack and Roberto go over the words in the bibliography which are in italics. r Bruno and Isolde. r Gabi and Andi. Show the title of the episode (pause the video when the title appears clarify what it means). Show the first storyline → Murat and Lisa. It is the very beginning of the episode. BEFORE you show the sequence, ask students to observe 1) what Lisa is doing 2) what Murat’s reaction is 3) what the purpose of the cooking is Do not spend too much time analyzing the sequence, just make sure students know what is going on. Have students report back. Show the second storyline → Jack, Roberto and his Mother Sabrina. Immediately follows the first storyline BEFORE you show the sequence, ask students to observe 6) who is involved and what people’s relationship is 7) what the atmosphere is 8) what Roberto is asking Jack and what her reaction is Have students report back.

Don’t spend much time here. Just say that it is the name of a children’s song which can be sung in many different languages. Answer: Murat says that it is not Ramadan anymore and that they don’t have to eat anymore after sunset or before the sun rises. But Lisa is already cooking to prepare for Paul’s circumcision ceremony.

Sabrina is Roberto’s mother. She owns the grocery store. Jack works there as an intern (yes, she did take Dr. Dressler’s advise). Roberto asks Jack out for dinner. He tells her to wear something nice. He pretends it is not a date, but he wants it to be one.

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Activity

16–19

Show the third storyline → Dr. Dressler and Bruno Skabowski. Immediately follows the second storyline BEFORE you show the sequence, ask students to observe 6) who is involved, 7) what is their discussion about, and 8) what is the overall problem Have students report back. r Inform students that they will now watch the whole episode and that they are supposed to observe and make notes of cultural issues and aspects they see while watching. No specific guidelines or handouts are provided for this activity. They should take notes of everything they find worthwhile mentioning. r Encourage students, tell them it is ok if they don’t understand everything. r Do not rewind but just continue to play the episode without interruptions where you stopped it after the third storyline. r Hand out directions for response papers and ask students to stick to those directions. r Remind students that response papers are due on Friday. Even if they don’t come to class they have to email them to you. r Also remind them that they are NOT allowed to use online translators.

19–47

47–50

Purpose/what students should learn from this activity Bruno has been depressed for quite a while because his girl-friend (she is not a girl anymore but a grown elderly woman) has skin cancer. She is away in a clinic to undergo her 2nd round of chemotherapy. She doesn’t want anyone to know that she has cancer and she doesn’t want Bruno to see her either since she is too proud to let him help her and see her suffer.

All activities are supposed to be in German. Reihenfolge der Szenen am Anfang der Episode: 1 Murat und Lisa (bereitet Abendessen fu¨ r Pauls Beschneidung vor, weil er nun Moslem ist) 2 Sabrina Buchstab, Jack und Roberto 3 Dr. Dressler und Herr Skabowski

Postviewing Activities

4–6

r Ask students what issues, topics, themes, aspects etc. they observed in the Lindenstrasse episode r Write down the ideas students come up with r Together with the entire class, categorize similar topics under broader concepts if necessary and

7–9

r Students create new discussion groups according to which topic, issue or cultural aspect on the

0–03

possible

board they would like to discuss further

r You, as the teacher, direct this → you ask, who wants to further discuss a, b, and c, etc. r If you have a big classroom please arrange the groups in a way that is communicative, e.g., 10–25

group members should face each other, later on, the presenting group should be heard and seen by everyone else r In their new groups, students do an in-depth analysis of their selected cultural themes in the next 15 to 20 minutes using the following guiding questions: r Display the following questions via doccam:

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26–50

a) How is the cultural aspect/issue treated in the TV show, e.g. what do people say, how do they act AND WHY? b) How would an American TV show portray the same issue? c) How would people in the US deal with the subject matter? d) Why do people in the US and in Germany tackle issues differently? e) What do such approaches to problems/issues say about people’s attitudes and values? r ALSO: This list of question is not exhaustive. Thus, encourage students to raise, hypothesize & answer additional questions for their analysis if they wish r The groups should take notes on their discussion and be prepared to give a 3- to 5-minute presentation to the rest of the class r Students should give the reporting group feedback and if possibly and necessary add additional thoughts to the discussion r Groups report and receive feedback from the rest of class

Please note: r Please, make sure students stay on task!!! r During minutes 10–25, students should talk to other students in their groups and NOT ask you unless they want something to be clarified, or they ask you for a translation. So, please do NOT discuss cultural issues while the students are supposed to discuss among themselves. While students are engaged in this activity please just circle around and make sure students stay on task. If students raise questions ask them to wait until they present their discussion results. Ask them to direct questions they might have to the whole class. Before you jump in and answer, see if the rest of the class has some idea. r If you experience that 15 minutes are too long for the groups to discuss the discussion questions, you can start presentations and in class discussions earlier. r If a discussion ABOUT cultural issues, aspects, topics, etc. is continuing well and remains on task, don’t interrupt unless you think you might run out of time before every group has the chance to present. r If the discussion stalls, you should play the moderator or facilitator and keep it going again by raising issues, questions, etc.

APPENDIX C Model for Assessment of Cultural Competency (MACC) Model for Assessment of Cultural Competency (MACC) Developed by Janet Swaffar, Katherine Arens, and Judith Hammer 1–3 scoring scale for rubrics 3 – Unambiguous/clear/present 2 – Partially unambiguous/clear/present 1 – Ambiguous/unclear/not present ∗ “Unambiguous” = writer provides enough for the reader to follow without speculation/interpolation ∗ “Ambiguous” = reader must speculate or interpolate about the writer’s intent in including information

Type of Accountability Argument Construction/ Rhetorical Organization

Subsections 1. Focus/topic for the overall essay indicated, stating major argument 2. Sections of the essay each related to that major argument (includes issues like topic sentences for new paragraphs) 3. Transitions between phases of argument marked 4. Details from source text subsumed to (sections of) the argument

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Judith Hammer and Janet Swaffar Type of Accountability Content Referentiality (textually verifiable reference to content)

Point of View/ Comparati ve Cultural Competence

Interpretive Substance

Subsections 1. Major issues/facts/situations/details from the source text accurately recounted 2. Sequences/chronology/events from source text respected/replicated 3. Relation of major/minor issues/facts/situations/details in source text accurately represented (this is weighting as accurate reflection of source) 4. Major issues/facts/situation/details named/labeled as in the source text (this is to get around stereotype/inference issue—writer has to see what IT IS, before evaluating) 5. Inferences made 6. Perception of genre as characteristic on content 1. Source and target cultures clearly differentiated, where appropriate (e.g., class or gender markers different across cultures) 2. Source and target cultures clearly equated, where appropriate (e.g., German and U.S. social structures in parallel, capitalism, etc.) 3. Writer clearly positioned within target culture (= awareness of stereotypes from own culture) 4. Source text clearly positioned within source culture (= awareness of stereotypes from text culture) 1. Draws conclusions beyond description of parallels (= inferences, elaborations) 2. Interrogates clich´es/stereotypes in source text (= multicultural awareness) 3. Interrogates clich´es/stereotypes in own thinking (= multicultural awareness) 4. Hypothesizes how single case fits into more general pattern of comparison (= integration of specific into larger knowledge base of culture)

APPENDIX D Sample of Student Response Papers Written in Weeks 4 and 14 Corey B. B. Response Paper 1 (Week 4)—Lindenstrasse—Das Eheversprechen Ich habe nicht viel von diesen Show “Lindenstrasse’ verstehen. Zuerst, Ich habe Jan und Iffi in ihrem Bett gesehen. Sp¨ater in der Show, mir schient daß Jan war Probleme mit seiner Ehe hatte. Er sieht einen Arzt, weil er nicht schlafen kann. Er weiß nicht, ob sein Kind wirklich sein ist. Inzwischen, Lisa und Murat bereiten sich vor Murats Eltern zu kommen. Sp¨ater, Lisa trifft die Eltern von Murat zum ersten Mal. Viel sich ereignen am dem griechischen Lokal “Akropolis”. Vasily und Elena Sarikakis streiten u¨ ber das Geld. Mutter und Sohn k¨onnen nicht eine Vereinbarung treffen, wie “Akropolis” zu leiten. Vasily vertraut Julian. Elena kann nicht. Viel Themen sind in diesen Episode erw¨ahnt: Familienwerte(family values), Geschlechtrollen(gender roles?), Vertrauen, Betrug und mehr. Familienmitglieder k¨onnen nicht einander vertrauen. Einege Leute sh¨atzen Geld u¨ ber alles. Alkohol trinken ist als normal portr¨atiert. Das Benehmen von Leuten in dieser Show scheint typisch Deutsch. Charaktere waren meistens konservative. Sie waren f¨ur eine Seifenoper nicht sehr gef¨uhlsm¨aßig. Ich habe dass die Themen waren f¨ur eine Seifenoper normal gedachten. Die Show soll dramatisch sein, und diese Themen sind dramatisch. Ich hatte keinen Einwand gegen dieses Material. Es darstellt deutsche Kultur wie es alle Kulturen darstellen. Vielleicht Ich besser verstehe Deutsche Kultur jetzt, vielleicht nicht. Ich habe keine Ahnung. Deutsche Kultur scheint a¨ hnlich zu der amerikanischen Kultur. Wie in Amerika scheint Geld wichtig f¨ur viele Leuten. Die Kleidung und die Dekor waren auch a¨ hnlich. Die kulturellen Unterschiede waren: wie die Schauspieler erschienen. In den USA, Schauspielere scheint immer sehr sch¨on. In ‘Lindenstrasse’ scheint die Schauspielere mehr normal. Vielleicht in Deutschland ist Anschein nicht so wichtig. Response Paper 4 (Week 14) – Lindenstrasse – Bruder Jakob

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Diese Episode von Lindenstrasse beginnt mit Lisa, die Fr¨uhst¨uck fr¨uh am Morgen koche. Die Familie von Murat kommt f¨ur die Bescheidung von Lisas Sohn Paul. Alex, wem der Vater von Paul ist, ist u¨ berrascht. Diese Episode erz¨ahlt auch die Geschichte von Roberto und Jack. Sie gehen zu einem netten Restaurant (u¨ ber das Motorrad) und enden sich zu k¨ussen. Dr Dressler erscheint wieder – dieses Mal versucht er, Bruno durch einer schwierige Zeit zu helfen. Die Frau, mit wen Bruno lebt, hat Hautkrebs, aber er kann niemanden dar¨uber erz¨ahlen. Es war interessant, wie Isolde Pavarotti fertig wird Krebs zu haben. Vielleicht ist das kulturell bedeutend – dass sie will, dass niemnad weiß. Sie hat Angst davor, schwach zu scheinen. Sie versucht, ihre Krankheit vor der Welt zu verbergen. Vielleicht Angst und manchmal Scham sind universale Reaktionen dazu, Krebs zu haben. Man siegt auch viel Teenagerkultur in dieser Episode Lindenstrasse. W¨ahrend Jack auf ihr Datum mit Roberto (date-as in to go out on a date?) vorbereitet, spricht sie auf dem Telefon und h¨ort Musik zu. Ihr Zimmer ist unordentlich. Sie hat viele Kleidung, aber sie mag keinen davon. Sie scheint a¨ hnlich Jugendlichen von Amerika. Sie versucht, a¨ lter zu scheinen. Es war sonderbar zu sehen, dass Roberto und Jack das Motorrad reiten, indem sie ihre nette Kleidung tragen. Amerikanische ¨ Teenager fahren typisch ein Auto. Noch viele Deutsche scheinen Motorr¨ader zu reiten oder Offentliche Verkehrsmittel zu nehmen. Das Auto ist f¨ur junge Leute in Deutschland nicht ebenso wichtig, wie es in Amerika ist. In USA will jede junge Person ein auto haben—nicht ein Motorrad oder ein Rad oder ein Roller oder ein Buspass. Dieser Teil der deutschen Kultur ist zu mir attraktiv—vielleicht weil ich habe zu viel von meinem Leben in einem Auto ausgegeben. Diese Episode von Lindenstrasse betrifft auch Religion in Deutschland. Es ist eine Quelle des Konflikts zwischen einigen Charateren. Es sieht aus, dass Alex durch die Nachrichten aufgebracht ist, dass sein Sohn beschnitten wird. Aber das ist die moslemische Tradition, und Murat ein Muslim ist. Lisas Mutter, Gabi, ist auch gegen Pauls Beschneidung und Kernvertierung zum Islam und denkt, dass das mal wieder eine von Lisas “spinnerte Ideen.” Religi¨ose Wahlen sind eine sehr pers¨onliche Sache in Deutschland, als in Amerika. Jeder in Lindenstrasse respektiert jedoch die Entscheidung von Lisa. Alex und Gabi stimmen mit Lisa nicht u¨ berein, aber sie mischen sich nicht ein.

APPENDIX E Comparison of First and Fourth Essays as Measured on the MACC Scale Rhetorical Organization

Content References

12

18

Student

1st

4th

Diff

%

1st

4th

Diff

%

Andrew Corey April Austin Billy Gerry Jessica Jennifer Melanie Michael Ashley Mary Ross Leticia Sarah Nick Total Average

5 6 5 7 7 8 5 5 5 10 5 10 12 5 10 9 114 7.1

9 12 11 9 10 9 8 9 7 11 9 11 12 5 10 7 149 9.3

4 6 6 2 3 1 3 4 2 1 4 1 0 0 0 −2 35 2.2

80 100 120 28.6 42.9 12.5 60 80 40 10 80 10 0 0 0 −22.2 30.7 31

7 14 12 11 7 13 11 11 8 15 10 13 15 8 14 15 184 11.5

15 16 16 16 13 16 14 16 13 16 14 17 16 9 16 14 237 14.8

8 2 4 5 6 3 3 5 5 1 4 4 1 1 2 –1 53 3.3

114.3 14.3 33.3 45.5 85.7 23.1 27.3 45.5 62.5 6.7 40 30.8 6.7 12.5 14.3 −6.7 28.8 28.7

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Interpretive Substance

Total Points

12

12

54

Student

1st

4th

Diff

%

1st

4th

Diff

%

1st

4th

Diff

%

Andrew Corey April Austin Billy Gerry Jessica Jennifer Melanie Michael Ashley Mary Ross Leticia Sarah Nick Total Average

5 6 5 6 5 7 8 6 4 8 6 10 11 5 9 9 110 6.9

11 12 8 10 7 10 11 6 5 11 5 11 12 5 8 8 140 8.8

6 6 3 4 2 3 3 0 1 3 −1 1 1 0 −1 −1 30 1.9

120 100 60 66.7 40 42.9 37.5 0 25 37.5 −16.7 10 9.1 0 −11.1 −11.1 27.3 27.5

6 5 5 6 4 5 8 4 4 8 6 10 10 5 9 10 105 6.6

12 12 9 8 5 8 9 4 4 11 5 10 12 5 6 4 124 7.8

6 7 4 2 1 3 1 0 0 3 −1 0 2 0 −3 −6 19 1.2

100 140 80 33.3 25 60 12.5 0 0 37.5 −16.7 0 20 0 −33.3 −60 18.1 18.2

23 31 27 30 23 33 32 26 21 41 27 43 48 23 42 43 513 32.1

47 52 44 43 35 43 42 35 29 49 33 49 52 24 40 33 650 40.6

24 21 17 13 12 10 10 9 8 8 6 6 4 1 −2 −10 137 8.6

104.3 67.7 63 43.3 52.2 30.3 31.3 34.6 38.1 19.5 22.2 14 8.3 4.3 −4.8 −23.3 26.7 26.5

Percentage is the difference between the two scores compared to the first score. Column with total points in descending order of improvement.

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