Discovery learning and teaching with electronic corpora in an advanced German grammar course

Abstract

This study describes the design and implementation of a usage‐based and corpus‐based advanced German grammar course. Teaching materials for the course included DWDS, or Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache: a large, representative, free and publicly available corpus of contemporary German texts. The article outlines specific theoretically informed principles for course design and presents a logical progression of corpus‐based grammar‐teaching activities as used in this course. It also reports participants’ post‐course reactions which were very positive. The article contains practical recommendations for educators interested in trying out corpus‐based activities for teaching German grammar at different proficiency levels as well as to different participant groups. Furthermore, it promotes a more holistic perspective toward grammar as a meaning‐making resource compatible with innovative approaches to grammar pedagogy.