Remote teaching of German language phonetics and phonology: some practical experiences during the pandemic

Abstract

The aim of this article is to describe the progress of remote teaching carried out in a course on phonetics and phonology of the German Language, which was being offered at the Portuguese/German Undergraduate Course, at the Ceará Federal University, as a mandatory teaching component. Our theoretical background is based on authors from the areas of German phonetics and Phonology (Dieling; Hirschfeld, 1995; Mangold, 2015), contrastive phonetics (Langer, 2004), teaching German as a Foreign Language (Bausch; Christ; Hüllen; Krumm, 1991), as well as on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe, 2001; Klett 2020). By describing some tasks performed in the remote classroom, we present the trajectory of the course offered during the two pandemic years between 2020 and 2022. Our results point to the challenges faced by teachers and students involved, but also include reports that highlight, on the one hand, successful experiences and, on the other, limiting situations in which face-to-face teaching would have been preferred.