Teaching of capitalization in German in secondary school

拼写能力差影响了许多德国学生。句子内的大写在德语正字法中尤其具有挑战性，即使是对二年级以上的学习者来说也是如此。传统上，从小学开始就教大写字母。在这里，大写字母直接与词汇类别“实体”的语义属性相关联。这种以词汇为主的教学方法经常被批评为学生拼写失败的原因之一。另一方面，句法方法摒弃了大写和词类之间的联系，转而断言大写规则是由句法理据决定的：根据Maas(1992)的说法，名词短语的头部是用大写写的；根据Funke(2017)的说法，“句法名词”是这样标记的。在Röber-Siekmeyers(1999)的句法教学法的教学实施中，小学生学会了应用明确的规则来识别名词短语的中心语。或者，也有“内隐”学习环境：在Melzer(2011)(遵循Funke，2005)的教学方法中，学生以“内隐”的方式探索与识字相关的成就的句法结构。干预研究表明，将德语作为外语学习的卢森堡五年级学生和德国二年级学生受益于句法方法(根据Röber-Siekmeyer)，并提高了他们的大写拼写能力(Brucher等人，2020，Wahl等人，2017)。然而，学生对大写字母的(词汇)成见出现了困难，这使得所谓的概念变化是必要的。目前尚不清楚大写的句法方法在德国二年级学生中是否有效，概念的改变是否由外显的反驳促进，以及内隐学习如何影响大写的拼写表现。计划的后续干预前研究的目的是评估第六和第九班(N=600)的四种教学方法(在线辅导)及其对学生生产性和接受性资本化能力的影响。方法(1)按照Röber-Siekmeyer的方法进行句法训练，(2)在句法训练之前对学生关于大写的词汇前概念进行额外的显性反驳，(3)与Melzer(2011)和Funke(2005)相一致的内隐学习环境，(4)标准词汇训练。在为干预研究做准备时，采取了以下步骤：(A)方法和教学设计以及学习教程的技术性准备；(B)初步研究，以找出哪些语言参数对项目的大写困难程度有影响。(C)开发一项拼写测试，以评估大写技能。干预研究的结果将被纳入大写在线教程和大写技能筛选测试，以便在中学实际应用。

Poor spelling skills affect many German students. Capitalization within a sentence is particularly challenging in German orthography, even for learners beyond the second grade. Traditionally, capitalization is taught from the beginning of primary school. There the upper case is directly linked to the semantic properties of the lexical category “substantive”. This predominantly lexical teaching approach is often criticized as one reason for the students’ orthographic failure. Alternative, syntactic approaches abandon the link between capitalization and lexical class and assert the rule for upper case is motivated syntactically instead: According to Maas (1992), the head of a noun phrase is written with a capital; according to Funke (2017) “syntactic nouns” are marked in this way. In Röber-Siekmeyers’ (1999) didactic implementation of the syntactic approach, pupils learn to apply explicit rules for identifying the head of a noun phrase. Alternatively, there are “implicit” learning settings: in Melzer’s (2011) (following Funke, 2005) didactic approach, students explore syntactic structures on literacy-related achievements in an “implicit” way.Intervention studies have shown that fifth grade Luxembourg students learning German as a foreign language, and German second grade students, benefit from a syntactical approach (according to Röber-Siekmeyer) and improved their spelling performance in capitalizations (Brucher et al., 2020, Wahl et al., 2017). However, difficulties arose from the students’ (lexical) preconceptions on capitalizations, which make a so-called conceptual change necessary. It is still unclear if a syntactic approach to capitalization can be effective in German second grade students, if the conceptual change is facilitated by explicit refutation, and how implicit learning affects spelling performance of capitalizations. The aim of the planned pre-post-follow-up-intervention study is the evaluation of four didactic approaches (online-tutorials) in sixth and ninth classes (N=600) and their impact on the students’ productive and receptive capitalization competency . Approach (1) is syntactical training as per Röber-Siekmeyer, (2) additional explicit refutation of the students’ lexical pre-concepts on capitalization prior to the syntactical training, (3) an implicit learning environment aligned to Melzer (2011) and Funke (2005), and (4) standard lexical training. In preparation for the intervention study the following steps are conducted: (a) methodic and didactic design as well as technical preparation of the learning tutorials, (b) a preliminary study to find out which linguistic parameters have an impact on an item’s level of difficulty with respect to capitalization. (c) Development of a spelling test to evaluate capitalization skills. The results of the intervention study will be incorporated into a capitalization-online-tutorial and a screening test for capitalization skills for practical application in secondary schools.