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I. Elementary Textbook (College) Tschirner, Erwin, Brigitte Nikolai, and Tracy D. Terrell. Kontakte: A Communicative Approach. 6th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Ed., 2009. Cloth, 433 pp. + Apps., $107.00. « www. mhhe . com/kontakte6»
The 6th edition of Kontakte is an excellent introductory German textbook, and like its previous editions, it maintains an impressive fidelity to Tracy D. Terrell's Natural Approach. Its goals are to develop the student's communicative competency through an emphasis on the natural acquisition of both productive and receptive skills, and it is accordingly organized so that vocabulary and grammar are taught through activities that stress group work and low-affect interaction between peers. The textbook relies on various fun and innovative exercises in order to catalyze the student's motivation to communicate in the target language, arguing that proficiency may not develop without production, and that the opportunities for this production must be maximized in the classroom setting.
Kontakte contains twelve chapters, plus two introductory chapters ("Einführungen"). The presentation of material is consistent and logical. Each chapter begins with receptive introductions of pertinent vocabulary and then segues seamlessly into limited reproduction of these discrete points. As the students advance through the chapter, they are required to use increasingly complex structures through open-ended dialogues and role-plays. A progression from comprehensible input to receptive recall and then autonomous production is thus ingrained into the blueprint of each chapter, following Terrell's central hypothesis that comprehension is required before production may occur.
There are four broad sections within each chapter of Kontakte: "Themen," "Kulturelles," "Lektüren," and "Strukturen." "Themen" guide the communicative situations that often take the form of interviews, role-plays, or "Informationsspiele." These latter tasks are notable because they provide two or more students with differing sets of data and require the students to negotiate with their partners for the information that they do not have. This closely replicates real speaking situations...