Synthetic and analytical approaches in grammatical progression in German courses as a foreign language

Abstract

In this paper, we try to compare the teaching-learning products of Brazilian students of German as a foreign language who learn the relative clauses of German from the proposals of progression of synthetic and analytical grammar topics, as described by Wilkins. It starts with a hybrid research proposal, combining elements of quantitative research with qualitative-interpretative ones, based on theoretical frameworks derived from the area of German as a foreign language and psycholinguistics, among others. To this end, data were collected from learners who had contact with the German relative sentences in an institutional setting, where textbooks were adopted with different proposals, namely studio d and Schritte International. It is considered that the teaching of grammatical topics in blocks, with the transmission of large volumes of information at once, as in the analytical approach and through the use of Schritte, can generate an overload of apprentices’ working memory. On the other hand, the teaching of grammar in phases or cycles, from the synthetic approach, allows the gradual deposit of information in the limited working memory. This would allow data to be based on long-term memory and can be accessed when new related data is being stored. The work and the experiment conducted confirm the initial hypothesis that both perspectives, when presenting their bonuses and burdens, lead to similar results in the teaching-learning process.

Keywords: German as a foreign language, progression of grammar themes, relative clauses, memory.