The SECL German project Shortcuts in German Grammar: A Percentage Approach (SCGG) has just entered a third phase, the second having looked at reported speech with the attendant factors of the use and formation of the subjunctive, often a source of wonder and confusion for English native speakers. This was successfully demonstrated at the Open Educational Resources for Languages conference at Bristol University in September, and generated further enthusiasm for collaborative participation by language teachers at other universities. The project is now moving on to deal with further grammatical difficulties typically encountered by learners of German.
SCGG first identifies and rigorously analyses typical difficulties experienced by native English speaker learners of German, then offers self-marking exercises with extensive diagnostic help options, an interlinked terminal glossary along with a performance analysis.
This ongoing project, originally created by Susanne Krauss, Honorary German Lektorin at Kent, now a Research Associate at the Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany, and Dr John Partridge, Honorary Lecturer in German and Linguistics, relies heavily on collaboration with Germanists from other institutions, as was the case with phase 2, and is constantly being expanded.
As its platform SCGG uses Study2000, originally developed at the University of Dresden. Study2000 is freely available as a teaching tool not only for German but for other languages and disciplines. It can be accessed free of charge as an easily navigable self-access help program for German learners and as a classroom resource on the Kent German Network site at:
www.kgn.org.uk/SCGGModul/ch1_start.htm
The authors are pleased how well the project has grown over the years and that it is receiving interest and acclaim from other institutions, including the Language, Linguistics and Area Studies Centre at Southampton University, and would welcome further collaboration from colleagues from other universities.
For further information please contact Dr John Partridge at jgp@kent.ac.uk or Susanne Krauss at S.Krauss@kent.ac.uk