Interkulturelles Leseverstehen An Der Abteilung Für Lehramt Deutsch

Text plays an important role in the teaching of language, because texts are the main materials in foreign language teaching. Every foreign language learner reads foreign texts. Generally reading is one of the main aspects of learning. Our reading habit is controlled by our preferences and needs. For example, we read what we find enjoyable in our spare time. But most of the time we read for information in schools. That‘s to say, it is teachers who decide what to read in the classroom. There are projects and field studies that control our reading habit in university. It is a well-known fact that in these days students read less, some even do not read at all. Books are no longer as attractive as it used for children and adolescent. It is because there are colourful things attracting the attention of the students in the virtual world. Therefore, it is the teachers‘ responsibility to take their attention back to books. This task is even more complicated and difficult when a foreign language teacher wants to achieve this goal. Many of the people have wondered why reading is important. Many other things seem to do with one's time. It can be explained so many reasons, why reading is important. Reading is fundamental to function in today's society. If someone needs a good job, he has to read more than other one in the society, therefore he can show his skills.. If someone want to earn good money and work in a good job, he has to show, that he has more abilities like reading. The reading in itself is an act that is difficult to perform for many people. Many people like to read. Especially today, information and technology age, reading is not considered important. But reading is still the basic way of receiving information. Language proficiency level plays an important role in understanding texts in foreign language learning. In recent years, scholars have emphasized the importance of motivation in learning. It is known that effective learning is depending on some affective factors like motivation. Students should be active participants in learning and they should decide how to use their knowledge in complex situations effectively. Of course, these are all very essential in text studies. While studying on the texts, we cannot expect that just reading texts will lead us to the desired outcome. Understanding a text requires many sub kills as well, while reading learners need to activate their prior knowledge, world knowledge and language skills. They formulate hypotheses and look appropriate schemata. All of these sub-processes lead not only comprehending the text but also achieving the objectives determined beforehand. This increases the rate of being in touch with other language speakers which strengthens self-confidence. This also helps personal development. When learners start to learn a foreign language, they start to experience other cultures and learn different perspectives, different life styles and this result in enrichment in their own identities. Learning a foreign language helps to understand target culture as well. Language teaching in our present day is essentially a cultural transfer. Therefore, it will be useful to accept language courses as culturalization. For us what makes ―interculturality‖ important is to make the culture transfer real by transmitting one or more than one language as foreign language teachers. At this point, culture transfer should not be understood as pure statistical or geographical information. That is the transfer of culture and country information via texts. Since culture transfer is also accomplished by texts, its ―reading‖ and subfields have also an important task and at this point culture has a very important rule. Transfer of culture doesn‘t mean the transfer of ―native culture‖, but foreign culture. For that reason, improvement of effective reading skill is prominent. The first reason to study with foreign language texts is to have a sufficient level of language knowledge and experience. There are some questions about those knowledge and experience. They should be at least at the level to understand the simple texts. Reading generally contributes to information acquisition. But reading in the foreign language is not only to understand what you read. By reading foreign language texts information can be acquired by the reader, but information is also related to the culture of the target language. This, the responsibility of readers is to deeply understand the mentioned text. Thinking that the basis of information acquisition is reading, reading should also be given much more attention. In this study, reading abilities of students at German Language Teaching department has been researched and their attitudes towards reading skill courses have been determined.