Hints


     If you chose Exercise A, it was probably because it asked students to inventory and express the key information in the scene, a combination of communications and connections standards.  Based on that information gleaned in this task, it might be possible for students to assume roles and reenact the scene in their own version of the play's words.

     However, while an advanced class might well be able to complete this task successfully, we do not recommend it for an initial reading procedure.  Initial exposure to the text, after all, is just that -- the first attempt to get an overview of howthe passage presents information.  Hence the teacher has two options: read an initial paragraph or two for language that introduces the information that will be read in the passage as a whole, or scan the passage to assess its rhetorical construction.

     If the text to be read is short, or if the teacher wishes to focus on the initial segment of a longer passage, then reading for topical vocabulary is appropriate as long as the focus is clear (see comments about Exercise B, Grade 8 Hints).  In Exercise A, however, the task involved looking over a longer passage (2 1/2 pages) for language representing several different emphases.  Instead of asking what people did or who people were, the exercise asked for both, which is not a sufficiently narrow focus of information for the novice reader.

     The point here is, first, to remember that initial reading should ask students only for what can be done relatively quickly (in less than 5 minutes) in class.  If the topical focus in Exercise A had been only on the initial paragraph and only on descriptive features ("Finden Sie Ausdrücke, die den Mann [Beckmann] beschreiben"), the task would be "doable" in 5 minutes.  Students would know they did not have to scan the entire text and would not be confronted with multiple tasks (looking for both "what" and "who" expressed in specific vocabulary).

     If scanning the entire text for different expressions is not desirable, what makes Exercise B feasible?  Before answering that question, consider the difference in task.  Remember that, in Exercise A, students were asked to find topical vocabulary.  In Exercise B they are asked only to identify various rhetorical segments, a task posing very different cognitive and linguistic demands.  When rhetorical differences are prominent in texts, they are much easier to locate than particular types of language usage.  Prominent rhetorical differences, after all, are marked with non-linguistic features such as quotation marks (or theirabsence), visual differences in blocks of text (dialogue versus commentary or descriptions) and speaker designations, features common to German and English.

     We emphasize here that rhetorical features are not necessarily preferable to identifying topical vocabulary, especially in a prose text.  Not all texts display prominent rhetorical differences.  Particularly as regards plays, however, awareness of shifts in rhetorical constructs such as locale or speaker / listener relationships helps alert readers to the need to change their expectations about a passage.  Unlike the more ambitious connections and communications standards implied in a search for topical vocabulary, awareness of rhetorical relationships only facilitates connection with the text.  To discover eventually what figures are saying, it is extremely helpful to recognize that, in the first segment of the prologue to "Draußen vor der Tür," a commentator is talking to the audience, not to someone in the play, and that the mortician, on the other hand, is talking to himself.  Such awareness of speaker/ listener or reader relationships eases the transition into comprehending, for example, what the commentator says to the audience or the mortician to himself.

     In sum, whether designing initial reading to identify rhetorical distinctions or to focus attention on topical vocabulary, an important task distinction should be kept in mind: the easiest level search (and the best guarantee for successful initial reading) for topical vocabulary is one that asks students to read only an initial segment of the text and focus on a single task (what people do or what they say or how they are described or how they think).  Students will, however, probably find it equally or even easier to read for fundamental differences in textual rhetoric.  Given that task, they should be able peruse longer passages in a short period of time.  Under these conditions (a very open-ended task, requiring students to get a predictable something out of a text, but not any particular language or piece of information), reading more of the text becomes a feasible initial demand on students.  because, when reading for rhetoric, the focus is on segments rather than words.  When reading for rhetorical shifts only, students can read paragraphs as chunks of text, solely to see whether those chunks represent different places, different narrative voices, or different characters interacting in a prose or dramatic text.  That is, they are doing a crude but crucial road map of the entire text, a sketch that they will fill in as they read for additional comprehension.

 EXERCISE A
 EXERCISE B