Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages in Germany: a personal overview of developments in research

There is an unavoidable dilemma in any attempt to put together an overview of the research results for one subject within a discipline. A subject area is either so small that the overview is straightforward but perhaps of interest to only a few, or the subject area is much wider – in which case there is the inevitable danger that the overview will be relatively subjective. This means that some activities may be disregarded while others are given more emphasis than another observer of the subject might have considered appropriate. For example, I have not included the teaching of literature, a complex subject with its own rich research tradition. Being fully aware of both the risks and the advantages of subjectivity, I present this very personal view of foreign language learning and teaching in Germany.