Acceso usuarios
Nicole Marx
To meet increasing needs for multilingual speakers, varied concepts such as Intercomprehension Pedagogy have evolved. Here, speakers of one language concurrently develop reading skills in multiple etymologically related languages. A prerequisite of such projects is information about mutual comprehensibility, including which languages might be easier to comprehend in which situations and for which learners. The present study investigated 73 German university students who read a short text in an unknown Germanic language (Danish, Dutch, Icelandic, Norwegian or Swedish) and then answered specific questions on content and structure. Results showed significantly higher success rates on all measures for Dutch, with isolated significant differences between the other languages and higher success in decoding lexical, in comparison to structural, information. No individual learner variables were found to be correlated with success. These data have implications for planning courses in Germanic intercomprehension, especially regarding time allotted the various languages.
