BERGAMO
Overview
Date/time interval
Syllabus
Course Objectives
1) Disciplinary goals (official course taught by the lecturer)
The course aims to develop students' linguistic analysis skills in the field of contemporary spoken German, with particular attention to the relationship between authentic orality, transcribed orality, feigned orality in written texts, and represented orality in audiovisual texts. Students will acquire theoretical and methodological tools for describing phonetic, prosodic, morphological, lexical and syntactic phenomena of spoken German, also through the use of corpora, transcripts, audio and video materials. Particular attention will also be paid to the interface between spoken language and other dimensions of language variation, that is, to phenomena of diatopic, diastratic and diaphasic markedness, to their relevance for German-Italian contrastive analysis, and to the development of the critical competence required for their study. More specifically, the analysis of a German series aimed at a young audience will allow students to reflect on the linguistic representation of interaction among adolescents and on issues of interlinguistic and intercultural rendering. Finally, this multifaceted approach to spoken German will contribute to improving listening comprehension skills, which are useful both for the final exam and for future professional placement.
2) Instrumental goals (exercises/AAL)
At the end of the course, students will also have acquired, deepened and improved their instrumental competence in the four communicative skills at B2+ CEFR level (oral production, written production) and at C1 CEFR level (comprehension of oral and written texts) with regard to the German language, as well as their skills in comparing and translating languages (Italian–German). To reach this goal, it is essential (although not formally compulsory) to attend the dedicated language learning activities (AAL).
Course Prerequisites
Knowledge of German at level B2 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).
Prerequisites: Students enrolled in the Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures degree programme (Corso di Studio in Lingue e Letterature Straniere Moderne) must pass the exam of German Language II - Linguistics and Translation (Lingua tedesca II - Linguistica e traduzione) and the exam of German Literature II (Letteratura tedesca II) or equivalent, if included in the study plan, before they can take this exam.
Teaching Methods
1) With regard to disciplinary skills (official course taught by the lecturer):
Frontal lessons in German. There will also be moments of seminar activities that include the active participation of students. The course includes the use of multimedia presentations, transcripts, audio-visual material, and written texts that reproduce orality.
2) With regard to instrumental skills (exercises/AAL):
For information about the language courses (AAL) as well as instructions and schedule for the related assessment tests, please visit the CLA website.
Assessment Methods
Verification of learning
The exam consists of a written part in which the language skills are tested and an oral exam on the topics of the course. Passing the written part of language proficiency is a necessary condition to access the oral exam on the subject of the course.
The written part on language skills consists of:
a) a computerised test with focus on grammar and vocabulary;
b) a written production;
c) an Italian-German translation.
All three partial tests must be taken at the first exam session chosen. The results of this written part will be published on the official course Moodle page and will remain valid for 18 months.
The oral exam on the subject of the course is based on an analysis of transcripts and feigned orality texts, as well as on testing the knowledge of the basic principles for the analysis of spoken German.
Assessment and evaluation criteria are the same for both attending and non-attending students. Regarding the assessment of the achievement of language proficiency at the expected level (see instrumental goals) see the specific training activities (AAL).
ASSESSMENT CRITERIA
The assessment will consider the level of knowledge and skills acquired during the course, particularly linguistic correctness (lexical, morphosyntactic, pragmatic, and phonological aspects), terminological accuracy, adequacy relative to the tasks, mastery of language analysis tools and reflection.
The written part accounts for one-third of the final grade (33.3%), while the oral exam accounts for two-thirds (66.6%).
Grading scale (out of 30):
Excellent (30 e lode): complete skills applied with precision and autonomy; no errors.
Very Good (27–30): strong skills applied correctly; minor and non-recurring errors.
Good (24–26): adequate skills with some inaccuracies; errors are neither serious nor systematic.
Sufficient (18–23): basic skills with evident errors but sufficient comprehension.
Insufficient (<18): incomplete skills with numerous errors that compromise performance.
Contents
1) Disciplinary content (official course taught by the lecturer)
The course introduces students to the analysis of contemporary spoken German, starting from a reflection on German as a pluricentric language and on language as a set of varieties.
The first part of the course will be devoted to authentic spoken German: definitions and theoretical models for the analysis of orality (Sprache der Nähe vs. Sprache der Distanz, the concept of "gesprochener Standard", and the use of spoken-language corpora such as the DGD and the Plattform Gesprochenes Deutsch, including their transcription conventions).
The course will then examine phonetic, prosodic, morphological, morphosyntactic and lexical phenomena characteristic of spoken German, including modal particles, discontinuous adverbs, progressive forms, deictic copular constructions, syntactic phenomena such as dislocations and non-canonical occupations of syntactic fields, as well as interactional phenomena such as interruptions, false starts, resumptions and reformulations. The analysis will be based on transcripts and authentic oral data.
The course will subsequently analyse the linguistic strategies that create effects of simulated orality in written and audiovisual texts. The material analysed will include dialogue passages from novels and from a German series for adolescents.
The course will also consider the interface between spoken language and other dimensions of language variation. Particular attention will be devoted to diatopically marked spoken language through analysis of regional and dialectal varieties, linguistic maps, atlases and multimedia materials, as well as to the diastratic and, to some extent, diaphasic markedness of spoken language and of its representation in texts.
Finally, from a German-Italian contrastive perspective, the course will analyse the interlinguistic rendering of orality and sociolinguistic markedness, with particular attention to literary and audiovisual translation.
2) Instrumental content (exercises/AAL)
For information about the language courses (AAL) as well as instructions and schedule for the related assessment tests, please visit the CLA website.
Online Resources
More information
COURSE MATERIALS
All materials used in the course as well as any additional guidance useful for exam preparation are uploaded to the course e-learning page on the Moodle platform.
EXAM TEXTS
The list of exam texts for the official course is definitive and contains the titles that must be studied in order to prepare for the exam. The list is available online (under Online resources – Leganto – Exam texts), by the end of September 2026 at the latest.
FURTHER INFORMATION
If you have any questions or require further information, please contact the lecturer by email (tiziana.roncoroni@unibg.it).
Erasmus and non-attending students are requested to contact the lecturer by email (tiziana.roncoroni@unibg.it).
The lecturer reserves the right to request a supplementary oral assessment after the written tests have taken place should this be necessary in order to verify that students have effectively acquired the knowledge and skills set out in the course instrumental goals and to ensure that marks are awarded correctly.