Landeskunde – eine ständige Herausforderung im Deutschunterricht

Résumé (en anglais)

Whether viewed-upon as closely culture-related or (as today) as a communicative-intercultural approach, as “Linguolandeskunde” (a language-oriented topic) or as contextual knowledge, “Landeskunde”/the “German Studies” have been since the 1970s of the 20th century in a constantly critical and changing foreground of the theoretical and practice-related dispute: what can/should FLT in addition to language itself convey more? Can “German Studies” claim their status as an independent subject within “DaF” (teaching of German as a foreign language), as they unmistakably represent today an "instrument of social opinion formation"? (Delmas/Vorderwülbecke). It stands so to reason that we have: A) first to gain insight into the development of the conceptual discussion (from the cognitive to the communicative and intercultural phase); B) then to think of the today's goals and priorities (cultural competence with its component skills, personality development and learner autonomy, authenticity and text genres), and all these with reference to the teaching of specialized German (here for Economics): C) finally to analyze some concrete perceptual and interpretative approaches based on examples from the teaching practice.