Teaching comma placement in German in secondary schools and universities

在德国，很多学生在拼写正字法时都非常吃力。直到中学及以后，最常见的错误是与逗号有关的错误，特别是子句结尾逗号。传统上，中学初等教育阶段的终句逗号课程侧重于连词作为信号词和主句与从句的分类；这种方法因导致学习者的困难而一再受到批评（Bredel et al, 2011）。作为一种替代方法，基于动词的方法已经发展起来，根据这种方法，无论是否存在连词，无论从句的类型和位置如何，话语总是在句子边界用逗号分隔（Primus, 2010）。Lindauer和Sutter（2005）以及Bredel和helbec（2015）的基于动词的教学模型将逗号的必要性与动词头部的存在联系起来。在这样做的过程中，假设句末逗号的简单明了的结构对学习者来说是透明的。目标是让学生认识到限定动词和它们的论点作为需要逗号的话语。不讨论从属连词和从属分句的分类。这些模式已被证明在中学教育中是适用的和实用的。然而，目前还没有有代表性的实证研究来探讨基于动词的模型与传统方法相比的有效性。因此，该项目旨在开展一项前后干预研究，以调查通过基于动词的方法与传统的信号词策略相比，教学子句-结束逗号的有效性。在这种情况下，五年级和八年级的学生以及大学生都接受了为此目的设计的在线课程的指导。该项目的第一阶段包括两个准备步骤：(a)在线课程的方法和教学设计以及技术实施；(b)开发适合于测量测试人员对逗号使用（子句-末逗号）的生产性知识的测试方法。干预研究的结果将在开发在线教程时加以考虑，以便在中学和大学教育中实际应用。

In Germany, many pupils struggle immensely when it comes to orthography. The most common errors that occur until secondary school and beyond are errors related to commas, particularly clause-final commas. Traditionally, lessons on clause-final commas at the beginning of secondary education focus on conjunctions as signal words and the classification of main and subordinate clauses; an approach, which has repeatedly been criticized for contributing to the learners’ difficulties (Bredel et al, 2011). As an alternative, verb-based approaches have been developed, according to which utterances are always separated by a comma at a sentence boundary regardless of the existence of conjunctions and regardless of the type and position of subordinate clauses (Primus, 2010). The verb-based didactic models by Lindauer and Sutter (2005) as well as Bredel and Hlebec (2015) connect the necessity of a comma to the existence of a verbal head. In doing so, the simple and clear structure of the clause-final comma is assumed to become transparent to learners. The goal is for pupils to recognize finite verbs and their arguments as utterances that require a comma. Subordinating conjunctions and the classification of subordinate clauses are not addressed. These models have proved to be applicable and practical in secondary education. However, there are no representative empirical studies exploring the effectiveness of verb-based models in contrast to traditional approaches. The proposed project therefore aims at conducting a pre-post-follow-up intervention study that investigates the effectiveness of teaching clause-final commas via a verb-based approach compared to a conventional signal-word strategy. In this context, groups of fifth and eighth grade pupils as well as university students are instructed in online courses designed for this purpose.The first phase of the project consists of two preparatory steps: (a) the methodological and didactical design as well as technical implementation of the online courses and (b) the development of test methods suitable for measuring the test persons’ productive knowledge of comma usage (clause-final comma). The results of the intervention study will be considered in the development of an online tutorial for practical application in secondary and university education.