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The German Spelling Reform and Its Impact on the AP German Exam
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by Thomas Lovik
Michigan State University
Okemos, Michigan
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| | Important Information for Teachers
All teachers of German in the United States should be well aware of the fact that there have been major changes in recent years in the German language. These include both the well-intentioned, yet highly charged, legislated changes that affect the spelling, capitalization, and punctuation of German as well as the ongoing language changes that tend to occur below the radar screen. Both types of changes have an impact on how teachers prepare their students for the AP German Language Exam as well as how they present the German language in all of their German classes.
Known as Die deutsche Rechtschreibreform, the legislated changes originally became effective on August 1, 1998, and are expected to be fully implemented on August 1, 2005. The current transitional period, in which both old and new forms are accepted, will officially expire on July 31, 2005. To the surprise of many people, these proposed changes have unleashed storms of controversy in the German press. After initially embracing the spelling changes, major print publications, e.g., Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, have since gone back to the old spelling, so that in 2005 one encounters with considerable frequency both the old and the new spellings. Needless to say, many native speakers of the language, not to mention teachers of German in the United States, are still confused about some of the proposed changes.
There are essentially six components of the spelling reform, which can be accessed at the official Web page of the spelling commission that initiated the changes:
 Zwischenstaatliche Kommission für deutsche Rechtschreibung
These six categories are: - Sound-symbol spelling correspondences
- Words written together or separately
- Use of the hyphen
- Capitalization
- Punctuation
- Separation of words at the end of line
Most of the confusion has arisen in the categories of 1, 2, and 4.
The following example from category 1 shows the old and the new spelling for words containing ß with a brief explanation following. Teachers need to know that unlike in Switzerland, where the ß does not exist, for Standard German the occurrence of ß has not been totally eliminated but has been restricted to use following a long vowel or a diphthong.
| Old | New | Explanation | daß, Fluß, ißt, muß, Schloß | dass, Fluss, isst, muss, Schloss | Identical double consonants follow a short vowel, e.g., Sonne | | Fuß, draußen | Fuß, draußen (No change) | No change because the u is pronounced long and au is a diphthong |
An example from category 2, which details when to separate words, is the following: | Old | New | Explanation | | kennenlernen | kennen lernen | Words that exist independently ought to be written separately. |
A very controversial change resulting from this rule is leidtun to Leid tun. In response to the objections to this proposed change, the latest edition of Duden Rechtschreibreform now accepts both the old and the new spelling.
Perhaps the greatest source of irritation to users of the language is the rule to retain identical letters in compound words, e.g., Schiff + Fahrt = Schifffahrt or Tee + Ei = Teeei!
Category 4 addresses changes in the capitalization rules of German. While the new rules for capitalization have not created the same degree of commotion as other aspects of the spelling reform, one significant change for German teachers and their students is the change from capital to lowercase in the personal pronouns in letters, e.g., Du to du.
The AP German Development Committee is well aware of the concern and confusion that these proposed spelling changes create for German teachers. For that reason, the Committee issued a statement in October 2004 that reflected the decision of the Kultusministerkonferenz in Germany, essentially saying that the AP German Exam will proceed with the timetable as originally proposed. The exact wording of the Committee's policy is published on AP Central and is as follows: The AP German Development Committee is aware of the debate about the German spelling reform and the decision on October 8, 2004, by the Ministerpräsidenten to adhere to the original timeline with some revisions to the proposed rules. The Committee adheres to the recommendations of the German Kultusministerkonferenz. Materials produced for the AP German Language Program will continue to use the new spelling, and the Committee encourages instructors to teach according to the new rules. It should be pointed out, however, that until further notice students will not be penalized for using acceptable pre-reform spellings. Depending on copyright permission, some reading texts appearing on the exam may adhere to the old rules and will be identified as such. What does this policy mean for the AP German teacher?
Unlike the reaction of some in Germany, it is the recommendation of the AP German Development Committee to let common sense prevail. Questions about when to use the proper spelling rules arise in the free-response section of the AP German Exam. Part A of the free-response section includes a cloze passage with 20 blanks for students to write in a word or words that correctly complete the sentence. Since the word daß has regularly occurred as an intended answer in past exams, it is possible that this will continue to appear in future exams. Teachers are well advised to present the new spelling to their students, but for some time to come, the evaluation process will most likely accept both daß and dass until the spelling changes have become well accepted in Germany.
When evaluating the written composition in the free-response section, AP Exam Readers employ criteria and rubrics that do not emphasize individual errors, be they spelling, grammar, word order, or vocabulary. Instead Readers apply a holistic approach, which means the composition is read in its entirety and assessed for its communicative value. This type of composition evaluation frequently requires a major readjustment for teachers who may tend to rely on tabulating individual errors as the preferred means of determining student abilities. In the end, whether or not a student writes daß or dass is much less significant in the overall assessment than whether they have applied the proper logic to the use of dass to make a meaningful, well-crafted sentence and argument.
The motto here for teachers really ought to be Keine Panik! It will still take some time for the German press, publishing industry, and schools to let the dust settle on the spelling reform, and the AP German Development Committee would be adopting an overzealous response to the situation should it decide to become the language police on a topic that is yet to fully play out in Germany. That being said, German teachers need to learn the new spelling rules and apply them in their teaching, since it seems highly unlikely that there will be any reversal of this decision.
Thomas Lovik is a professor of German at Michigan State University in East Lansing, where he also supervises the German teaching assistants. He has an MA in linguistics/ESL from the University of Minnesota (1976) and a Ph.D. in Germanic linguistics from UC Berkeley (1983). He has published on TPR, German-English pragmatic differences, and the German teaching profession. He is lead author with Douglas Guy and Monika Chavez of the first-year, college-level German language textbook Vorsprung: An Introduction to the German Language and Culture for Communication, Updated Edition (Houghton Mifflin, 2002). He is the editor of Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German (2005-2007).
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