Teaching comma placement in German in secondary schools and universities

在德国，许多学生在拼写方面遇到了巨大的困难。中学及以后最常见的错误是与逗号有关的错误，特别是子句结尾的逗号。传统上，中学教育开始时关于小句结尾逗号的课程侧重于将连词作为标志词以及主从句的分类；这一方法一再被批评为增加了学习者的困难(Bredel等人，2011年)。作为另一种选择，已经发展了基于动词的方法，根据这种方法，无论是否存在连词，也无论从属从句的类型和位置如何，话语总是在句子边界处用逗号分隔(Primus，2010)。Lindauer和Sutter(2005)以及Bredel和Hlebec(2015)提出的基于动词的教学模式将逗号的必要性与动词中心语的存在联系起来。这样，句尾逗号的简单而清晰的结构对学习者来说就变得透明了。目标是让学生将限定动词及其论元识别为需要逗号的话语。不涉及从属连词和从属从句的分类。实践证明，这些模型在中学教育中具有一定的实用性和实用性。然而，与传统方法相比，还没有有代表性的实证研究来探讨基于动词的模式的有效性。因此，该项目旨在进行一项事前、事后的干预研究，调查通过动词为基础的方法与传统的符号词策略相比较的小句末尾逗号教学的有效性。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)制定适合测试人员使用逗号的生产性知识的测试方法(从句--末尾逗号)。这项干预研究的结果将被考虑到开发一个在中学和大学教育中实际应用的在线教程。

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.