UK GERMAN LEARNER PERCEPTIONS OF GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

Studies of UK learners’ beliefs and attitudes around German, the Germans, and Germany are usually positioned in the broader context of motivation for language learning. One focus of the current project, however, is to explore the relationship between UK learners’ attitudes towards and motivation for learning the German language on the one hand, and their attitudes to Germany and German speakers (i.e., the target language

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community and community of speakers), on the other. In an attempt to disentangle these three interrelated concepts of attitudes towards German, the Germans, and Germany, this current section deals with studies or parts of studies which focus on school age learners’ beliefs and attitudes towards Germany and the Germans, whereas learner attitudes to German learning and German as a school subject were discussed in the previous chapter, with some inevitable overlap of the literature.

Narrowing in on the world-wide perspectives on Germany to attitudes held by school-age learners from the mid-1990s onwards, the on the whole positive perceptions of Germany emerging from recent surveys, as outlined under 3.2. and 3.4. above, are

balanced by a rather more complex picture when learner perspectives are taken into account.

Cullingford (1995) conducted an interview study with 160 British primary-age learners. His key findings were that Germany was associated with war, and that the Germans came up as a ‘disliked people’. The methods of this study remain somewhat unclear. The statistics programme SPSS is mentioned, but no inferential statistics are reported. The chapter is dominated by quotes from participants about the negative attributes of Germans.

The Goethe Institut commissioned a large-scale study with 1695 student-

participants of an average age of 14.7 from GB and Ireland, conducted by Sammon (1996, 1998). Sammon reported largely negative attitudes, as well as a preoccupation with

German Nazis and sports personalities, both illustrated and undercut by the quote “Hitler, Klinsman, Mataus [sic]. Don’t know any other footballers” (in Bowcott, 1996). However, Sammon’s study is open to criticism due to several weaknesses, such as the problematic justification of the overrepresentation of independent schools in the sample “because their students have an important influence on British society” (Sammon, 1998, p. 76; my

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describe “a typical German” could be said to itself encourage stereotyping, whilst the author’s groupings of said adjectives into positive, negative and neutral categories are not justified by a rationale and appear rather arbitrary. Sammon refers to a survey

commissioned by the computer company Gestetner in 1996, which, whilst not discussed in academic literature, received much press attention at the time. When 800 British school pupils between the ages of 10 and 16 were asked about their attitudes towards other European countries, Germany emerged as the most boring, the least attractive to visit, the poorest, and associated with WWII and with Hitler (Bennet, 1996).

If Sammon’s study appears problematic, Keller (1991) also seems lacking in academic rigour. Keller states that his questionnaire is informed by research dating from between 1933 to 1963 (p. 121). The list of 148, from a contemporary point of view highly problematic, characteristics which German and British school pupils were asked to rate each other’s nations against, include “effeminate”, “men of the world”, “beautiful women”, and “good housewives” (p. 133-135). References cited in Keller’s study date back to the 1950s and are no more recent than the 1970s. To avoid the forming of negative stereotypes during a school visit abroad, Keller has this advice: “… pupils should be given the chance to meet representatives from different social groups (political parties, trade unions, age groups, denominations)” (p. 135). One might be inclined to explain the shortcomings of this study due to it being dated, however it was published without any modifying editor’s comments as late as 1991, and is quoted for its supporting evidence in more recent publications (e.g. Baumann & Shelley, 2003).

In a departure from the pattern of negative attitudes emerging from the studies above, Thornton and Cajkler (1996) used a questionnaire with 178 learners from seven English schools who were of the same average age as Sammon’s participants (14.7.) , and found learners’ attitudes towards German culture, life, and “the German character”

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learners did not refer to their German lessons as a source of information for their

perceptions of German culture. It emerged that whilst learners were generally positive and curious about Germans and Germany, they based this attitude on very little factual

knowledge or experience. The authors point out that while school exchanges are meant to further cross-cultural knowledge and understanding (e.g. King, 1992), their data suggests that such opportunities are only available to some learners, typically along a regional and socio-economic division. For example, in one of the participating schools 66% of learners had taken part in an exchange to a German-speaking country, whereas in another 0% had. This led the authors to suggest that exchange programmes might in fact increase the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged learners. Yet, such experiences with the target language community contributed not just to positive attitudes, but also to a perception of higher competence in German for learners in Thornton and Cajkler’s study.

In his study with a main focus on English German learner motivation, Chambers (1999) examined attitudes of 11 to 17-year-old students and also found largely positive attitudes held by UK learners about the Germans. However, in a more fine-grained analysis, Chambers asked his participants to describe German people based on Gardner and Lambert’s (1972) ethnocentricity questionnaire items. Results were then coded into “negative”, “don’t know”, “positive”, and “varied”, according to the adjectives learners used in their responses (p. 111). At age 11, most English learners were positive about Germans, and around one third held negative attitudes. Responses two years later showed that learners became more positive and less negative about the Germans, however, this pattern was reversed for the age 13 to 15 cohort. Data from follow-up interviews with 10% of learners led Chambers to suggest that the increase in negative responses between age 13 and age 15 was linked with exchange visits, appearing to contradict Thornton and Cajkler’s results. All of Chambers 15 to 17-year-old learners, however, viewed Germans either positively, or gave varied responses.

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Interestingly, in their large-scale study with a 25% sample from 14 to 17-year-old language learners across 100 Scottish secondary schools, McPake, Johnstone, Low, and Lyall (1999) found that although learners held generally negative attitudes towards MFL learning, they did not express correspondingly negative attitudes towards the target language communities and speakers. This would support the discussion of attitudes towards country and speakers on the one hand, and towards the language as a school subject on the other, as distinct concepts.

Lee, Buckland, and Shaw (1998) split pupils’ responses to questions regarding attitudes towards the target language speakers into German and French in their study of 62 year 9 students in London. They reported neutral to positive attitudes towards both German and French lessons, and generally positive attitudes to both the German and the French people. This study was preceded by similar results found by Phillips and Filmer-Sankey (1993), who also noted that learners of German were more keen on contact with Germans, than learners of French were with native French speakers.

A survey which does not seem to be discussed in academic literature is the ‘Mutual perceptions research’ by the British Council and the Goethe Institut (British Council Berlin & Goethe Institut Berlin (2004). In this quantitative study, 1,000 young people aged 16 to 25 in the UK and Germany were asked about their opinions of each other’s countries and people. It is important to note that the UK participants were not necessarily learning

German at the time of the survey or previously, and only 12.8% were school students at the time of the survey. A key finding regarding UK participants was that they did not seem to have much knowledge about Germany. Culture was named both as the most positive thing about Germany (40%), and as the most negative (42%). Both positive (27%) and negative perceptions of Germany (18%) were reported to have been influenced by German people the participants had met personally. As in earlier surveys, Germany’s national socialist past as well as sports personalities dominate the ‘most famous Germans’ list.

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