PECULIARITIES OF PERCEPTUAL-ARTICULATORY LANGUAGE ACQUISITION IN THE CONTEXT OF GERMAN AS A LANGUAGE OF INSTRUCTION IN AUSTRIA

This article is devoted to the peculiarities of the acquisition of phonetic skills by learners of German as a language of instruction in Austria. The focus of the study is on students whose first language is Ukrainian who came to Vienna in 2022 and had to integrate into the Austrian school system. When addressing the acquisition of German as a language of instruction, special attention is paid to the linguistic situation in Austria, which is strongly influenced by dialect-standard continuum processes. In this context, we first look at the terminology, clarifying the difference between learning German as a foreign language and learning German as a language of instruction. We then deal with the term dialect-standard continuum. The dialect-standard continuum model is based on the fact that oral language use can usually neither be clearly interpreted as dialectal nor as standard language. Special features, known as salient features, attract great attention in interaction processes. The phonetic-phonological level of Austrian German is characterized by particularly strong variation at the segmental level, where, for example, the change from the standard /a/ to the so-called muted [ɔ] takes place and the diphthong [aḙ] is pronounced overly open as [ӕ:], which is about Viennese monophthongization. The research question is then formulated and the methodological design of the planned study is described. To answer the research question, linguistic literature will first be used. A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods is planned for the implementation of the empirical part. Thanks to this approach, transfer phenomena from the first language as well as special features of Austrian pronunciation that influence the process of acquiring German at the phonetic level can be identified, analyzed and systematize. On the one hand, this work makes a contribution to basic research. On the other hand, it then deals with the development of suggestions for supporting the acquisition of German in general and perceptual-articulatory skills in particular for students whose first language is Ukrainian.