Daf in Kenia: Eine Kritische Untersuchung der sprechübungen und aufgaben des lehrwerks safari Deutsch.

Abstract

Safari Deutsch is used as a coursebook for teaching German as a foreign language in Kenyan secondary schools. Most German language learners in Kenya have difficulties in speaking despite the fact that Safari Deutsch offers many exercises that foster their oral skills. This research sought to critically investigate two course books: Safari Deutsch 1 for the beginners and Safari Deutsch 4 for intermediate learners. The aims of the study were to find out the type of exercises that Safari Deutsch offers tofoster the speaking skills of the learners, to what extent the learners do the exercises offered by Safari Deutsch and to find out if the teachers follow the methods of Safari Deutsch in teaching oral skills. The communicative and cognitive approaches were used as the theoretical background of this study. To acquire the results of this research, a qualitative aund quantitative analysis was used. The course books were critically investigated using the Stockholmer “Kriterienraster’’ (A set of criteria). Furthermore, a questionnaire which consisted of structured and unstructured questions was given to the teachers from 10 secondary schools in Kenya. They were able to anwer the questions about how often their learners do the speaking exercises offered by Safari Deutsch and to what extent they follow the approaches of Safari Deutsch. The results showed that most teachers do not use Safari Deutsch in teaching oral skills to the learners for various reasons. They use other materials which are provided by the Goethe Institute Nairobi. It is also clear from the results that most learners use Safari Deutsch in doing grammatical exercises. They rarely use it for practicing speaking using dialogs, presentations, reports and role plays. To conclude, the results show that most teachers are not satisfied with the use of the exercises offered in Safari Deustch and they gave suggestions on how to improve them. I also gave suggestions for a further improvement of the book so as to encourage learners to learn to speak. Key words: Oral competence, course book, monologic speech, dialogic speech, exercises, task based exercices.