Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee in 140 Characters or Less: Using Twitter as a Creative Approach to Literature in the Intermediate German Classroom

Abstract

The advent of new and social media, and Twitter in particular, has not only revolutionized how we communicate with each other, but also how we learn and teach. Twitter is increasingly incorporated across the disciplines as a tool to engage with content. In the foreign‐language classroom, for instance, Twitter has been used to facilitate language learning, communicate with native speakers, and build community. This article describes how Twitter was initially introduced into an intermediate German classroom to improve communicative competence and foster student engagement. Yet its main focus is on how Twitter was used as the only method of instruction as part of the discussion of Thomas Brussig's 1999 novel Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee. The first section explains the methodology behind using Twitter, and briefly charts the advantages and disadvantages of the social networking tool for honing communicative skills and building community. The second section outlines the classroom unit during which the students and the instructor communicated solely via Twitter. After a discussion of the session, and sample student assignments and reactions, the article concludes by highlighting the educational benefits of Twitter as a playful and motivating approach to teaching literature in the intermediate foreign‐language classroom.

Use of Twitter across educational settings: a review of the literature

“…For instance, students studying a foreign language can interact with native speakers and know more about their culture. On Twitter they can practice with convenience outside of class while remaining in close contact with those who speak their first language (Fewell, 2014;Kim et al, 2011;Steckenbiller, 2016). Finally, Twitter is also supportive to educationalists other than students and teachers.…”

“…Twitter's microblogging feature allows users to publish their ideas and opinions in "real-time messaging" format by writing tweets limited to certain number of characters (initially 140 but now up to 280). Furthermore, by features such as hashtags, mentions, and replies, users can network and dialog with other Twitter users (Steckenbiller, 2016). Various aspects of Twitter practices has been researched in a number of domains including tourism (Sotiriadis & van Zyl, 2013), sports (Gibbs, O'Reilly, & Brunette, 2014), governance (Haro-de-Rosario, Sáez-Martín, & del Carmen Caba-Pérez, 2016), health information (Himelboim & Han, 2014;Malik et al 2019), elections (Vergeer & Hermans, 2013), and activism (Johri et al 2018;Malik et al 2018).…”

Gender Differences in Using Social Media in Language and Literature Teaching in Multicultural Context

“…Twitter furthermore demonstrated to be a fun and motivating method of teaching literature in the intermediate foreign language classroom (Steckenbiller, 2016).…”

Teaching Fairy Tales: Constructing Culture and Learning Language

“…Just as important, however, are the soft social skills of the instructor, both in terms of making sure the students are comfortable with a particular teaching style and interpreting difficult concepts and texts in ways with which students can identify. Redmann (2008) and others discuss this in detail (Rogers, LeCompte & Plumly, 2012; Rubin‐McGregor & Rubin, 2018; Steckenbiller, 2016). The most successful discussions were those where the students’ discussion questions were related in theme or content, and, while some of that connection is perhaps only serendipitous, instructors can seed discussions by asking rhetorical questions during lectures, encouraging students to read particular secondary works, or posing larger, thematic questions at the beginning of a module in order to guide the overall arc of the discussion.…”