Maxi Pauser - Tertiary Language Teaching and Learning principles: The Case of German L3 at Spanish Universities

In the last quarter of 20thcentury the communicative approach or communicative language teaching (CLT) hasbeen gaining importance and popularity at an accelerated rate in all Europeancountries. As a result, teaching of different foreign languages was oftencharacterized by strict separation. In English classes in Spain, for example,no Spanish (mother tongue) or French (second foreign language) could be spoken.In the 1990s it became increasingly apparent that there are quantitative andqualitative differences between the learning of a first foreign language andthe learning of a second. On the one hand bilinguals or students of a secondforeign language can benefit from their prior knowledge of languages whilelearning a third language (L3) or second foreign language. On the other hand, itis assumed that certain teaching strategies based on tertiary language teachingprinciples can maximize the effects of learning these third languages.

The plurilingualism of Spanishstudents learning German as a foreign language in Spanish higher educationcontexts is being considered one of multiple consequences of the complexglobalization process. As a result, it poses a new didactical challenge becauseit requires the introduction of teaching methods, which take into accountpreviously acquired language knowledges. The aim of this paper is to reveal howother languages of student’s prior language knowledge were taking intoconsideration during the language teaching process of a new language during theperiod 1945 – 2015 in different European contexts.  It also reviews articles about languageteaching principles based on tertiary language didactics and shows how they canbe applied to German as an L3 in Spanish university contexts. The limits of thecommunicative approach are also to be discussed.

Bibliography

Cenoz, J.,Hufeisen, B. & Jessner, U. (eds.). 2001. Cross-linguistic Influence in Third LanguageAcquisition: Psycholinguistic Perspectives. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Hufeisen, B.and Gerhard Neuner (eds.). 2004. The Plurilingualism Project: TertiaryLanguage Learning - German after English. Council of Europe Publishing.

Hufeisen, B. (2000). A European Perspective – Tertiary Languages with afocus on German as L3. In Handbook of Undergraduate Second LanguageEducation, Rosenthal, J. W. (ed.) (2000)

Neuner, G.The concept of plurilingualism and tertiary language didactics. In ThePlurilingualism Project: Tertiary Language Learning – German after English,Hufeisen, B. and G. Neuner (eds.), 13 – 34. Council of Europe Publishing.