German English-Textbooks and Their Digital Sphere Jürgen Meyer The present article is a case study of various specimens of textbook-based teachware (TBT) appended as CD-ROMs or DVDs to the current generation of students’ English workbooks, ranging from primary school to general education (Sekundarstufe I) at Realschule and Gymnasium. Focusing in particular on different dimensions of feedback as established by Hattie (2014), the subsequent content analyses highlight a number of significant features of these TBT systems, designed for an autonomous learner. They are compared to a web-based alternative with genuinely interactive feedback-options, the FeedBook research project. The analysis aims to show whether, how, and to what degree these different learning management systems (LMS) may contribute to efficient learning in times of mandatory home-schooling and intensified distance learning. 1. Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic, beginning in spring 2020 and continuing well into 2021, has occasioned a considerable acceleration not only in the public discussion of digitization processes, but it has had also a huge impact on the implementation of computer-assisted language learning and teaching strategies in teachers’ and learners’ daily lesson routines. In their survey taken immediately during and after the first general school lockdown in Germany from March to July 2020, Huber et al. conclude that homeschooling may have opened a vast potential in dealing with the heterogeneity of a learner group in their home environment (Huber et al. 2020: 24; for details cf. 49-50). They confirm what earlier research on e-learning in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) has shown, to be summed up in the following words: AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 46 (2021) · Heft 2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen DOI 10.2357/ AAA-2021-0013 Jürgen Meyer 160 Digital media support learning processes in many ways. The use of digital media […] fosters self-directed and cooperative learning and supports the development of more open forms of teaching. […] Learning processes can be better individualised and differentiated through digital media, […] because of adaptable and adaptive software and Internet, through self-selected materials, and students choosing their own learning approaches. […] [F]urther advantages are gained with software that is both interactive and provides individual feedback on results or on learning status and/ or proficiency. (Eisenmann 2019: 114; cf., for example, Schmidt 2007, Eisenmann & Strohn 2012, Grünewald 2017) Accordingly, schoolbook publishers have responded to the challenge of integrating digital language learning and teaching methods with their increasingly digitized teaching materials. These materials have been in strong competition with commercial educational software ever since the ideas of digital learning entered the classroom in the mid-1980s. 1 Typically, the current generation of textbooks still offers a range of multimedia resources, such as extra audio-CDs and/ or DVDs, and the three largest schoolbook publishers have developed their own, more advanced online content-learning platforms, such as Alfons (Westermanngruppe) for primary education, or scook (Cornelsen), e-course (Klett) and kapiert.de (Westermanngruppe) for secondary education. 2 Whilst scook offers largely digital twins of the publisher’s printed textbooks, to be enhanced either by materials else available as disc-based TBT, or by materials from other sources, kapiert.de and e-course are specifically presented to teachers eager to promote cloud-based instead of textbook-based learning. Still, since the implementation of competence-oriented educational standards and curricula in the first decade of the 21 st century, the textbook with its wide range of individually adaptable materials may have gained even more significance as “Leitmedium” (Thaler 2012: 88) than in times of input-driven foreign language teaching with its detailed content prescriptions outlined in specific frameworks (Rahmenrichtlinien). Thus, for a long time before COVID-19, learning materials of a variety of sources were permitted, although school legislation has given preference to printed copies of published material that has passed earlier administrative assessment: such as 1 This article cannot consider the vast number of commercial open educational resources (OERs), mentioned in Eisenmann (2019), Schmidt (2016) or Strasser (2012), let alone the vast range of apps listed in the “Padagogical Wheel” (Carrington 2016). 2 In addition to these publishers’ platforms, many other private companies offer their own, textbook-independent LMS for individual use (see a brief comparative assessment in Fritzen 2021), whilst public and private institutions sign up with extremely complex LMS using ISERV or Moodle. The latter two differ from the ones mentioned above in that their main focus is on providing a comprehensive digital learning environment which substitutes the real world classroom, equipping teachers with a wide range of tools for feedback, assessment and evaluation, which exceed the facilities of any disc-based TBT geared towards the individual, offline learner. German English-Textbooks and Their Digital Sphere 161 coursebooks in the shape of “Druckwerke für die Hand der Schülerin oder des Schülers” (Niedersächsisches Kultusministerium 2020a: § 29 “Lehr- und Lernmittel”), 3 to be enhanced by a multitude of additions and alternatives with or without such official quality assessment. 4 Education ministry websites are now offering large samples of download materials for distance learning (cf., for example, Niedersächsisches Kultusministerium 2020b). Since one among many sobering experiences with distance learning in the COVID-19 crisis has been the technical unreliability of many platforms hired by schools, with their frequent system breakdowns making many materials unavailable for learners, 5 it makes sense to take a look at offline contents made accessible in the digital extras appended to the textbooks by the publishers: May these materials sufficiently help developing learners’ competences in EFL, thus serving as a possible backbone for phases of increased distance learning? In view of the almost complete absence of any comparable studies analysing and assessing the material under review in this article, 6 the following case studies will highlight a number of didactic features and characteristics of current TBT. Assessing different examples of disc-based TBT covering two of the three stages in the German school system, early and intermediate learners, this paper analyses Helbling and Klett’s Playway 3 and 4 (for primary education), as well as Cornelsen’s Lighthouse 3, Diesterweg’s Camden Town 3 3 Still, the political demand for a higher degree of education in, and by, digital media emerges from the strategy paper of the standing conference of ministries of education in Germany (Ständige Kultusministerkonferenz, hereafter KMK) “Bildung im digitalen Zeitalter [Education in the Digital Age]”, signed in 2016. With the administrative agreement between the German federal government and the individual states, “DigitalPakt Schule 2019 - 2024 [Digital Initiative School]” (BMBF 2019), educational policies had moved far beyond any point of return even before the pandemic struck in 2020: It is supposed to secure the financial and institutional backgrounds for establishing the digital infrastructure within school-buildings and classrooms. The short temporal gap between the agreement and the crisis may be one reason why so many schools, teachers and learners were caught wrong-footed when they had to organize the massive shift from classroom instruction to distance learning. 4 For the procedures in administrative textbook assessments, cf. Stöber 2010. Since the German federal states have different assessment practises, or have abolished them altogether (ibid.: 4), it seems necessary that publisher-external quality management ought to be be taken over by the respective branch of Fachdidaktik which is also responsible for teacher education in a particular school subject. 5 To date, there is no reliable survey on the problems encountered by institutions, teachers, learners and parents alike in the management of distance learning during the COVID-19 crisis. However, there has been an ongoing coverage about the political and institutional governance of the situation, including success and failures, across the whole public sphere. 6 The notable exception to this observation is Schmidt’s empirical study, dating back prior to its publication in 2007, which analyses an older generation of TBT and its application in cooperative learning scenarios. Jürgen Meyer 162 and Klett’s Red Line 3, 7 all targeting Sekundarstufe I learners in Year 7. 8 This is at a stage in their education career equally far away from the first and second transitions (the latter paving the way to either a general school certificate with subsequent vocational training, or to advanced learning in Sekundarstufe II). Finally, the focus shifts towards an innovative textbookbased LMS: the FeedBook research project which has its foundation in the above mentioned Camden Town 3 workbook (addressing Gymnasium). 9 As web-based interactive software with split teacher and learner interfaces, this system allows far-reaching, contrastive insights as “adaptive” software going far beyond the limitations of any of the disc-based TBT discussed before. Evaluation criteria in the subsequent argument will be, for each of the software items analysed, the following ones, enabling a heuristic assessment matrix of the respective object: 10 a) Needs analysis b) Feedback types, according to Hattie c) Pedagogical and methodological appeal d) Other criteria (language policy, etc.) Each of these criteria is essential for an autonomous student to become successful in his / her language learning efforts, implying that, first, in order to improve one’s foreign language proficiency, a solid needs analysis might prepare the learner for contents and language topics. Without such needs analysis, a TBT will not respond to, or direct, a student’s individual performance, but it will offer, by way of a scattergun approach, a range of 7 Klett’s complex “Colour Lines” system comprises textbook series for Hauptschule with transition option for Realschule (Blue Line), Realschule (Red Line), Realschule with transition option for Gymnasium (Orange Line), and Gymnasium (Green Line). Despite marginal differences in language policy (see footnote 13 and in task complexity, as well as to avoid confusion, I shall limit my attention here to the Red Line 3-LMS; for the same reason I will neglect Camden Market, the Realschule-equivalent to Camden Town. 8 The volume ciphers in each of these coursebook series, stretching from “1” (Year 5) to “6” (Year 10), are anachronistic, because they indicate the students’ learning year, ignoring the fact that learner biographies begin with obligatory English language courses at Primary education level. Due to the federal system of education in Germany, there are two countries in which primary education lasts for the first six years (Brandenburg and Berlin), and there are three countries in which EFL begins as early as in the second term of Year 1 (Baden-Württemberg, Hamburg and Rhineland-Palatinate). 9 I am indebted to Prof. Dr. Detmar Meurers and Björn Rudzewitz, M.A., Eberhard- Karls-University Tübingen, for permitting me access to their FeedBook system, which was a project in the SFB 833 “The Construction of Meaning: The Dynamics and Adapticity of Linguistic Structures”, running from 2016 until 2019. 10 Since these disc-based software items work as facultative options for the autonomous learner, there will be no assessment category such as cooperative learning facilities. German English-Textbooks and Their Digital Sphere 163 unspecific activities which may or may not target any individual learner’s demand. Second, feedback in particular is an important assessment category, because it serves a number of different functions and takes on different shapes in any learning environment: Process-oriented and scaffolding (formative) feedback is considered more efficient than product-based, evaluative (summative) feedback; still, both forms are necessary for any meaningful statement about a learner’s progress (De Florio-Hansen 2018: 307). Furthermore, it is most important to provide a kind of feedback which takes into view both the quality of the learning process and its regulating forces, for which reason John Hattie has defined four levels, displayed in the table below (adapted from Hattie 2014: 130): These levels differentiate quality of content (task), choice of method (process and self-regulation) as well as reflection of meta-cognitive processes. Yet, in contrast to Hattie who attributes all these dimensions to the learner perspective, in the present model there is a further distinction of monitors who provide and process either form of feedback: on the one hand, it will be provided by the teacher who - whichever degree of learner-orientation s/ he may chose - is in control of the task and its expected content (goal). In the case of an automatic control system integrated in an LMS, this individual range of feedback, including determining methodical liberty to solve a problem, is strictly limited. On the other hand, the learner/ s will solve a task on the basis of their cognitive and methodical knowledge, with the effect of being aware which method/ s may be suitable to accomplish the goal, and will then also be able to assess the degree of complexity experienced. Dimension Assessment Criteria Monitor 1 Task Quality of performance Quality of solutions Error correction (competence) Teacher / LMS 2 Process Choice of strategies needed to perform the task Awareness of, and selection from alternative approaches Teacher 3 Self-Regulation Knowledge, cognition, motivation (content-related and methodical) Error avoidance (performance) Self-monitoring competence Learner 4 Self Evaluation of learning effort Table 1. The four levels of feedback (adapted from Hattie 2014: 130) In an autonomous, digitized learning arrangement, the question of feedback following a learner’s action in the foreign language is an even more sensitive issue than direct teacheror peer-feedback. The question is (how) Jürgen Meyer 164 can digital software achieve a similar complexity of feedback so that it may efficiently support and develop the learner’s EFL competences? Third, both the possibility of a needs analysis and the type of feedback has an impact on the methodological design of tasks, exercises and activities: Are the expected language products oneor multidimensional, i.e. do they permit ambiguity and individual language production, or do they limit the range of possible solutions to a minimum? The wider the range of possible answers, the more complex and “intelligent” the software would have to be. Likewise, the general didactic character of the software is determined by its underlying student profile, which allows a placement within the continuum between behaviorist and constructivist task designs. Finally, an “open” category assesses, for instance, the language policy of the respective software (for instance, is the software all in the target language, or are there code switches). 2. Playway 3 and 4 (Primary School) The first case study turns to early foreign language education, as it was implemented in the state curricula in 2003. Most federal states in Germany begin teaching English in year 3 within the regular four year course of primary education. The pupil’s book Playway 3 comprises ten units with the topics “What’s your name”, “Hello”, “School”, “Animals”, “Clothes”, “Family”, “Body”, “Weather”, “Lunch time” and “On the farm”, plus three special topics on religious holidays (Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter). Playway 4 features another nine units, “Pets and Animals”, “In Town”, “Birthdays”, “Shopping”, “Free Time”, “Feelings”, “Time”, “At Home”, and “Food and Drink”. As can be easily inferred on the basis of these topics, the main focus in the primary education course is to lay a discursive and lexical rather than grammatical foundation of the foreign language. Usually, teachers are free to consider the textbook-units as modules, since there is no strict grammatical progression and learners may be involved in the selection of topics. The software for both consecutive volumes may be installed on a hard drive and it works like a video game. It begins with a travel narrative in which the learner meets a guide, Max, and is invited to accompany him on a bus-ride to the educational village centre. In due course, Max will appear also as instructor and character. At the end of this brief introductory sequence, Max stands in front of a map displaying all the learning topics known from the book units. Despite its modular character, it suggests a circular way from the periphery to the centre, from simple to complex themes, but the pupils are not required to follow this sequence: They are free to choose the topic. By clicking onto one station, the next screen opens and, after an introduction of the most relevant thematic lexical items, a German English-Textbooks and Their Digital Sphere 165 series of language exercises begins. The introductory exercise helps conceptualizing, via a re-iterative matching routine, these lexical items visually (by image and text) and acoustically, whilst the subsequent exercises serve practising their usage and internalization. A top menu bar shows a sequence of eight exercises addressing different learner types (in particular, the communicative, the visual, and the auditory) and “intelligences” (Gardiner 1987) in each: Thus, the game “promotes emotional learning while providing informal knowledge” (Eisenmann 2019: 137), even though it does not, as in more advanced gamification scenarios, foster strategic thinking or productive language competences. The range of exercises includes, in accordance with primary school foreign language learning, receptive rather than productive skills with a focus on comprehension (reading, listening, with matching or ordering exercises), whereas writing (e.g., gap filling) and speaking (e.g., singing along, assisted by a recording device) are minimised. 11 A memory game and/ or a skill game conclude the sequence of exercises in each unit. In a more detailed approach, the focus is now on the final, most complex exercise in the first learning unit for Year 3: a skill game. The aim is to practise applying and identifying the numbers 1-10 and an equal amount of colours, which are presented visually (both as cipher and as word) as well as acoustically (as voice clip). The learner’s task is to collect the items showering down on Max on a meadow by moving him to and fro in order to catch the “correct” objects, i.e. the ones where voice, text and image correlate; those numbers and colours which do not represent the spoken word must be escaped from, or they will hit Max on the head and kill one of the three flowers on the ground at his feet, which thus symbolise the number of “lives”, or attempts at completing the task. Although the speed of the items falling down is reasonably slow, the pupil will have to concentrate on the acoustic signals and the visual representation, and s/ he must coordinate Max’s movement in order either to catch or escape an item. Each correct solution is then indicated by a square in a vertical bar, thus representing the learner’s achievement. When each of the ten items has been collected, a rainbow indicates the learner’s success. In case all the flowers on the ground are dead, there will be a thunder and lightning hitting Max. This means “game over”, and the player may restart the game. Additionally, a final monitor shows Max skateboarding speedily across the screen after successful completion of a task, or - in case of failure - he hits the ground. It is obvious that both the symbolic weather and the final 11 The most recent primary education textbooks (Klett’s Come in, Oldenbourg’s Flex and Flory) bear witness to a change in attitude towards raising early learners’ awareness of the English graphemic system (Elsner 2010: 94 - 97; cf. also Treutlein et al. 2013); thus, reading and writing play a larger role than in previous textbook generations. Neither of these new product lines has been (as yet) equipped with learning software, which is why they are no subject of analysis in the present context. Jürgen Meyer 166 screen stand in for a teacher’s summative feedback, yet lack any detailed information value. The question is what changes ensue in the software for Year 4. Structurally, Playway 4 accords with the beginner’s volume, although the sample of lexical items in each unit is slightly increased. Although one might have expected a certain qualitative progression from the most elementary unit to one which might serves to prepare the pupil for the transition into Year 5, there is no such advancement except in quantity - the cognitive stimuli are largely identical at the beginning and at the end of the whole two-year course, focusing on memory and reproduction. In order to visualize the learning effects achieved by the software of both volumes, the following table may be indicative: Advantages Disadvantages no learner-oriented needs-analysis focus on discursive features: listening, viewing, reading comprehension as main skills vocabulary work storytelling / games no individual language production learners may select the order of exercises within a topic at their own liberty addressing all learners (instead of everyone) learners proceed at their own pace ad libitum repetition may generate aleatory results, without a genuine learning effect feedback mainly on product (= summative, evaluative) hardly any scaffolding, formative feedback on process no self-regulating feedback monolingual repetitive practice (drill) as regular approach to solutions Table 2. Red Line 3, Lighthouse 3 and Camden Town 3 It is striking that neither of the two Playway CD-ROMs contains a single word of German, and that all the instructions are exclusively available in the target language English: The tasks are presented as audio-files and by illustrations, but without any written ‘back-up’. This engages the user’s multi-channel perception and s/ he has to focus on the information displayed on screen, listen carefully to the instruction, and follow it in action. Moving to Sekundarstufe I, Year 7, we see a remarkable difference in the various LMS-discs appended as optional material to the workbooks complementing the series Camden Town, Lighthouse, and Red Line: Exercises in Camden Town and Lighthouse offer a button to switch from English to German, whereas Red Line is English-only for tasks. 12 The feedback pages / status reports are German throughout. In terms of their contents, each TBT 12 This bilingualism may have a drawback in learners’ attitude towards the foreign language, since it remains only a language of learning, instead of becoming a language for and through learning (for these small, but significant nuances cf. Coyle, Hood & Marsh 2010: 36). German English-Textbooks and Their Digital Sphere 167 system establishes a close connection between workbook and learning software by alpha-numerical codes in the former, which call up specific anchoring exercises in the latter. Obligatory core-curricular themes in Year 7 focus on Great Britain and Ireland, manifesting in Red Line 3 as “England now and then”, “Adventures in Wales”, “Made in Scotland”, “In Northern Ireland” and “Welcome to Ireland”. Four learning objectives are targeted in each topic: In the first unit, objectives are headlined 1) “I can understand information about historical places in England”, 2) “I can give and understand directions”, 3) “I can talk in more detail about where I live”, 4) “I can understand a story from the past”. Usually, the can-descriptors nos. 2) and 3) in each unit are divided into two parts each, so there are six parts per unit altogether. Each “objective” leads to a set of exercises which focus on the unit and often use gap-filling as well as matching and ordering exercises, or students listen to audio-files and answer multiple choice questions. At the end of each set, the learner may call up a feedback page in which the results are listed as bars indicating green (correct), red (incorrect) solutions, and grey for the ones yet unsolved. The general layout of the software, especially in its directory surface, is at the same time easily accessible and plain, as well as uniform and repetitive, hardly inspiring for learners expecting a motivating learning extra-stimulus. The feedback is limited to the product assessment, without any of Hattie’s procedural or self-regulating dimensions, apart from the admonitory suggestion “Hier musst du wohl noch etwas üben”, if the objective has not been accomplished, and an unspecific, rather laconic, “Super! ” in the opposite case. Although Lighthouse 3 is thematically similar to Red Line 3, its learning software is more complex both in design and feedback options. It comprises five units on different regions in the UK and Ireland: “I love London”, “Country Life”, “Liverpool - the world in one city”, “Bonnie Scotland” and “A Summer in Dublin”. The software offers 56 exercises in total, with 14 each for the first two units, 12 for the next two, and five for unit 4; most of these exercises feature functional-grammatical (language) phenomena (22) and vocabulary work (20); four of the five core skills - listening and reading (5 each), speaking (3) and mediation (1) - are represented to a far lesser degree. With the exception of the final unit, a self-assessment precedes the concluding chapter quiz. This arrangement according to competence areas, rather than such strictly communicative objectives as in Red Line, allows the student to specifically filter on skills which s/ he needs to improve. As in the software for primary education, none of these tasks require actual language production. However, again in contrast to the previous example, there is the possibility of learners self-assessment and differentiation, indicated by three levels of complexity: in the first and easiest, the student has to drag and drop given word chunks into the correct order of a sentence; the intermediate level often presents matching exercises in Jürgen Meyer 168 which a solution has to be inserted into a particular grammatical category; the highest level requires to enter individual items (lexical or grammatical) into gaps, with a remnant of incorrect alternatives from which the student had to choose. At the end of a task, the student receives feedback on the solutions after completing the exercises, although it is not a feedback which details in which category exactly the learner should further improve. Still, this may be done by going back to the items, and then it is possible to compare the correct solution with the wrong entry. However, no equivalent to a teacher’s explanation or scaffolding is provided, so the learner must infer the underlying grammatical rule. Alternatively, before answering, one may use the “Tipp”-option which tells the user the initial letter of the solution (as a rudimentary form of scaffolding), or the learner may look up the solution as a whole. At the end, the number of correct forms filled in is counted, as is each call for assistance. In the examination mode, in contrast to practising (“prüfen” instead of “üben”), there is no such assistance available, but the student has to take risks and enter suggestions until the correct solution is found. What is not counted, in either mode, is the number of incorrect attempts before the correct solutions are complete. Finally, the pupil may assess the exercise as difficult, intermediate or easy. The Gymnasium-targeted Camden Town 3-TBT proves to be technically the most advanced software discussed so far, although most of the exercises, again, are closed and do not allow for alternative solutions. In contrast to the others systems, with their printable, introductory text-document as instruction manual for the respective TBT, it offers three videos in German which, as “Programmtour”, explain the various features of the software. Like in Lighthouse, exercises can be differentiated according to the level of complexity; but what is more, the learner may filter exercises by “Fertigkeiten”, according to his/ her own needs: It is possible to choose from a drop-down menu writing exercises and give this skill preference over those of (viewing-)listening comprehension, reading, grammar, lexicon, mediation or communication; notwithstanding, many tasks combine two or three competences. Learners must complete all tasks and extra activities in a unit (including a test, a portfolio, and vocabulary training) before they get access to a “fun game” in which they play against the cartoon-figure Taylor, who may be considered an equivalent to Max in the Playway software; however, in this case, the character functions as challenger rather than as partner. In accordance with the core curriculum for Gymnasium which goes beyond regional aspects of the UK and the Commonwealth, Camden Town comprises additional topics on travelling and communication / social media: “On the move”, “Welcome Wales! ”, “Famous Brits”, “Keep me posted”, “Diverse Britain” and “The Great Outdoors”. Each of these chapters contains up to 25 exercises plus the aforementioned additions and the “fun game”; the character of these exercises is of comparable complexity to German English-Textbooks and Their Digital Sphere 169 those ones for Realschule: Sets of gap-filling or matching/ ordering exercises, jumbled letters (to form words) or word clusters (for sentences) reoccur several times, as do memory, crosswords and similar game activities. The feedback page, however, is - like that in the Red Line TBT - rather a status report about which exercises have been solved, but it does not present such a detailed learning profile for each chapter as does Lighthouse. It turns out that all the specimen of disc-based software discussed so far may be categorised as assistive in the sense that they expand both the pupil’s book and the printed workbook. Installed on a desktop or notebook with a disc drive, they encourage computer-assisted language learning at home and offline. 13 Whether designed for primary or secondary school, all exercises comprise a closed range of accepted solutions; ambivalence or an individual’s active language production being reduced to a minimum. In contrast to Red Line, which allows no differentiation in exercise complexity, and Camden Town, with selected exercises allowing for differentiation, Lighthouse stands out in the sense that it allows subjective differentiation with different degrees of task complexity for all tasks, thus even stronger appealing to the competitive learner who is ambitious to try the next grade after completing a lower task level. The feedback type may, at best, be classified as “summative”, since after every exercise the learner is given feedback on the whole product, either by means of visuals or/ and a score. It is true that learners receive automatic real-time feedback on their solution, and the Camden Town system allows three attempts, before it shows the solution, meaning that the learner has to start the exercise anew. Usually, feedback going beyond a colour-coded highlighting of problematic suggestions is unspecific and does not, for instance, encourage the user to revise syntax, or grammatical features such as tenses and reported speech, etc. Since exercises may be repeated at the learner’s liberty, it may even be questioned that any degree of memorizing and understanding is necessary in order to obtain positive feedback eventually. Only the Lighthouse-TBT presents an exception to the rule with its book-keeping of assisted attempts, and by allowing the learners to assess the degree of complexity experienced in the process of solving a task: In this case Hattie’s categories of product, process, self-regulation and self are more closely monitored than in the other software systems. All these digital activity formats and most of the feedback types are largely indebted to learning methods which, from today’s point of view, have been long outdated but which are, in the commercial language learning software market, quite average: Playway employs the direct approach, using English only and offering many audio-lingual components. Each new word field foregrounded by the respective units is introduced by activating 13 When registering on the publisher’s website, the system may also be accessed online, without any changes in design or contents. Jürgen Meyer 170 the various perception channels by sound, image and text. In contrast, software for Sekundarstufe I is rather indebted to the behaviouristic sequence of stimulation - response - feedback. Still, these LMSs for intermediate learner levels also feature a number of assets, so that the following table juxtaposes in conclusion their main pedagogical features: Advantages Disadvantages Camden Town 3: possibility to filter particular competences, i.e. allowing a learner to select items s/ he finds important Lighthouse 3 / Red Line 3: no preceding learner-oriented needs-analysis main foci on function/ grammar competence and discursive skills (lexicon) no individual, autonomous language production, no attention to intercultural communicative skills or text-/ media competences Lighthouse 3: differentiated feedback, acc. to Hattie’s model: product (task, content), self-regulation (learning methods), selfawareness (complexity) Red Line 3 / Camden Town 3: no formative, scaffolding feedback, student action may lead to trial-and-error (operant conditioning) bilingual design: Feedback in German; optional code-switch English/ German in tasks repetitive practice (drill) as regular approach to solutions Table 3. FeedBook: A research project Usually the most problematic didactic issue of the disc-based TBTs analysed above is their deficient, unspecific feedback: 14 After all, ideally the goal is to give immediate feedback on the language produced by the learner, e.g., to help students complete homework exercises in the system step by step. For meaning-oriented exercises, such as reading and listening comprehension, this is especially challenging, since the system needs to evaluate the meaning provided by the student response and possibly give helpful feedback on how to improve it in the direction of an acceptable answer. (Ziai et al. 2019: 93) Considering this as a premise, the final analysis turns to a web-based LMS, transforming the Camden Town-workbook. 15 Its metamorphosis into an online medium was targeted at the aim of providing teachers and students 14 “Feedback” is here understood as the gap between a didactic competence goal and the learner’s actual performance at a given point in the competence development process. Accordingly, “Feedback involves information; goals involve evaluation” (Locke & Latham 1990: 197). 15 To avoid any misunderstandings: If the previous section focused on the publisher’s offline, disc-based TBT addressing the autonomous learner, FeedBook is based on the print-/ ebook-workbook itself, to be used in lessons also at school, as an alternative to the ‘original’ rather than as addition: Therefore, the following paragraphs focus on learning materials not contained in the DVD but only in the workbook. German English-Textbooks and Their Digital Sphere 171 with a learning device which allows both individualisation and differentiation, i.e. at the reintroduction of the teacher as active monitor. The formal advantage of this LMS is that its contents have been approved of by the educational authorities - a massive asset compared to most OERs which are often grassroots and DIY projects, but which are not systematically aligned with the particular contents of a publisher’s workbook, let alone the core curriculum and educational standards. FeedBook is an online system “provid[ing] immediate scaffolded feedback to students on form and meaning for various exercise types, covering the full range of constructions in the seventh-grade English curriculum” (Meurers et al. 2019: 161). It consists of two different surfaces, one for the teacher and the other for the learners - in contrast to all the other discbased learning systems discussed above, this one is not designed for the individual but interactive learner, and it allows real-time teacher/ student communication. The two interfaces enable participants to give and receive feedback as well as to generate individual (i.e. personal) learner profiles. The student, entering a solution, immediately gets systemic feedback not only on content level (correct/ false or complete/ incomplete), but also on grammar and, to a lesser degree, spelling. This feedback differs significantly from the merely colour-coded highlights in the TBTs, and it includes several forms of scaffolding feedback, allowing the student to revise an incorrect attempt. The system checks each answer against a background of ten grammatical categories, plus “others”: tenses (future, present, past), reported speech, comparatives, conditionals, relatives, reflexives, gerunds, and passive voice. For example, if the formation of the progressive faulty, the system will provide a drop-down list with alternative solution in different tenses from which the learner has to pick the appropriate one. A second error correction draws the learner’s attention to a grammatical phenomenon, such as syntactical rules: “Use a comma before ‘and’ if it connects two independent clauses (unless they are closely connected and short).” There are, in all, 188 such pre-fabricated feedback and scaffolding types on the different grammatical topics, which pop up as the learner enters a faulty solution. Likewise, in a reading exercise instructing the student to collect a set of information from a text (“scanning”), s/ he has to prove his/ her text comprehension in a multiple choice format. After detecting an error, the system highlights a text-passage containing the relevant information and opens a dialogue field: “This is not the correct option. Look at the highlighted passage in the text again”. The solution proper is not marked, but the context where it is located is displayed to the learner who then will have to identify the actual word or phrase. The most significant feature of FeedBook, therefore, is its scaffolding feedback which not only detects incorrect grammatical forms or discursive elements, but also helps the student to achieve a higher degree of reading comprehension by directing attention to specific text information which may be expected in a solution (for details see Meurers et al. 2019: 169-170). Jürgen Meyer 172 In the teacher’s interface of the LMS the user may see whether, and how many, students have submitted a task, and can then begin analysing their solutions. 16 It is possible to choose from two kinds of teacher feedback: On the one hand, there is an asterisked general feedback type, used when the task has been solved satisfactorily and does not require any specific commentary. Apart from this evaluative type of feedback, the teacher may also use the informative type for which s/ he may enter his/ her impulses or explanations into a writing box, and the student will see the individual comments after receiving the teacher’s feedback. After completion of a few exercises, the teacher may use the system’s diagnostic option, and will recognize how many students share the same difficulties, or in what direction they develop. It is thus possible to encourage the individual to practise a particular phenomenon, for example the simple past. The system will select a thematic range of tasks from all workbook-units focusing on the past tense. Neither teacher nor student will have to invest time in searching for specific exercises addressing the student’s need; instead the choice of exercises is numerous enough to allow the student to take his/ her own decision - which is in effect a differentiation according to performance (strength/ weakness) met by personal preferences. The difference from the filtering option in the Camden Town LMS is that the FeedBook options go far beyond the skill level, profiling particular grammatical structures. The system helps create a fine-tuned customized individual learner model for each student, mapping all the grammatical features of the system in a graphic profile, and thus providing individual assessment of the learning progress. By grouping several students in a class according to their specific needs, the teacher may practise a more individualised form of differentiation and respond to the demands of a heterogeneous classroom with a wide range of learner abilities. All in all, FeedBook takes the original medium to the next level, showing the following four most distinctive features in comparison to the previous examples of TBT: Main Features Contents: - possibility to generate individual learner-oriented needs analysis and progress matrixes Feedback: - combination of systemic (automatic) and personal = didactic (teacher) feedback - feedback includes not only product, but also processand self-monitoring (regulation and assessment) Methods: - contents remain identical with the print edition, but are rearranged according to the student’s individual needs 16 The learner’s submission and the teacher’s subsequent assessment are reminiscent of a messenger system in which each participant is notified whenever a document has been sent. Thus, this communication, in contrast to the systemic feedback, is not in real-time. German English-Textbooks and Their Digital Sphere 173 Disadvantages: - explicit didactic situation, loss of gamification appeal unreliable error detection and correction by the system 17 3. Results and Outlook The respective publishers’ digital resources are closely related to the contents of the actual textbooks, addressing specifically those autonomous learners who are able to work with the offline digital media in a self-directed way, yet agree to follow the curricular, textbook-related contents of the respective software. This means that the learner can always fall back on the contents explained in the textbook, and is thus not left alone, as might be the user of an LMS unrelated to any textbook. However, it may be said that generally, digital TBT-products turn out as didactically conservative, in that they still lag behind modern teaching and learning paradigms, drawing on behaviorist rather than constructivist methods. Deplorably, Schmidt’s conclusion to his earlier OER software analysis remains valid also for publishers’ TBT products for the present textbook generation: All in all it would be desirable to find fewer apps [and other software, JM] that treat learners rather like Pavlovian dogs by reducing their activities to drills with rewards, feedback loops and repetitions […] than inviting them, in accordance with current foreign language learning, to discover and dive into the foreign language and enable them to contextand content-rich communicative and still play-oriented learning. (Schmidt 2016: 100, transl. JM) More efficient and motivating for the learner may be a genuinely interactive system based on algorithms which should be able to decode and assess a student’s outcome in real-time - FeedBook is a step into this direction, geared towards the cognitive rather than the affective dimension of learning, thus lacking any gamification device. However, any such “intelligent” commercial software, with the potential to create learner profiles is, from a data-security angle, a highly sensitive issue, apart from the expensive background software necessary to develop and implement in correlation to 17 This appears to be rather a quantitative than qualitative criterion, requiring a (vastly) increased “intelligent” background data-base which would allow the system to add, identify, and process correct grammatical forms and lexical items. - That said, it seems fair to add that the dynamic lexicon in the publisher’s TBT is equally deficient, leaving no space for ambiguity. Thus, if the system tests the learner’s command of words, it does not acknowledge correct solutions, but is dependent on the context of a specific unit where the item is used. For example, “because”, “for” or “as” are not accepted when “since” is required for the German word “da, weil”, and for “Stadt” only “town” but not “city” is ‘correct’ - the conceptual specification of “town” = “Kleinstadt” is merely implied in the defining sentence “I live in a small town”. Jürgen Meyer 174 the various standards of language proficiency for different learner levels. Regarding competence training, publishers’ TBT, at present, focuses primarily on communicative skills, i.e., functional-grammatical, lexical and discursive competences, as well as (text-/ media)comprehension on the level of reception, and spelling. 18 Also, the shift from offline to online, cloud-based contents becomes more and more visible, providing access to these contents both by via local workstations and mobile devices (notebook, tablet, smartphone, etc.). For example, most recently Westermanngruppe have replaced their digital version of Bumblebee by the more comprehensive LMS Anton.de, and Playway, in its 2020 revised edition, offers an online LMS which comprises the identical set of exercises known from the earlier DVD software. 19 Furthermore, an additional media app has substituted the former set of audio-CD and film-DVD for teachers, with 16 films and 17 audio-files to be accessed either independent of the Playway textbook or as augmented reality (i.e. by scanning the book page with a mobile device, which identifies the respective file and plays it). 20 These learning materials are now available and accessible for learners and teachers alike, thus promising - stable connectivity and sufficient broadband capacity provided - at least a short-term motivational appeal for the learner, though with hardly any communicative or linguistic gain (cf. Grünewald 2016: 464-465), since there are no tasks for the students to solve: The app functions focus merely on reception, i.e. listening and viewing competences. Owing to its close alignment with the textbook contents, disc-based TBTs might be valued for an important function which the Lower Saxony ministry of education pays attention to - the repetition and consolidation (anchoring) of foreign language structures: “Während im normalen Unterrichtsalltag dafür oft zu wenig Zeit bleibt, bietet das Distanzlernen die Chance für Üben und Wiederholen und Festigen von Gelerntem in intelligenten Settings und sollte entsprechend genutzt werden. Eine Konzentration auf Basiskompetenzen wird empfohlen.” (Niedersächsisches Kultusministerium 2020b: 23). For this particular, rather specific EFLobjective, the variety of publishers’ TBT will be sufficient, provided they 18 This focus changes at a more advanced proficiency level reached in Sekundarstufe II, when text-mediaand intercultural competences are expanded in such areas as text interpretation or film analysis (both coming along with extensive writing tasks). A case in point may be Schöningh’s Pathway film analysis software. 19 In this case, the game character of the disc software may actually have been more motivating than the explicit learning scenario characterising the online LMS, if only for the brief introductory travel-narrative, in which the learner accompanies Max to the educational village. It is this short sequence that allows the young learner to immerse with the “story”, seeing Max as guide rather than instructor. 20 On primary education level, Cornelsen have developed a similar “Augmented Reality” (AR) app, “Buchtaucher”, for their Sally and Sunshine series; Diesterweg addresses secondary education by specific AR-apps for Camden Market and Notting Hill Gate. For a critical review of the latter, cf. Kurtz 2018. German English-Textbooks and Their Digital Sphere 175 allow, at least in rudimentary form, a needs analysis and scaffolding feedback. Works Cited 21 Berwick, Gwen et al. (2014). Lighthouse: Workbook 3. Includes Audio-CD and TBT (CD-ROM). Berlin: Cornelsen. BMBF (2019). Bundesministerium für Bildung und Familie: Verwaltungsverordnung DigitalPakt Schule 2019-2024. [online] https: / / www.bmbf.de/ de/ mit-dem-digital pakt-schulen-zukunftsfaehig-machen-4272.html. Carrington, Allan (2019). The Pedagogical Wheel, Version 5. [online] https: / / designingoutcomes.com/ english-speaking-world-v5-0/ Cornelsen (n.d.). scook. [online] https: / / www.scook.de/ . Coyle, Do, Philip Hood & David Marsh (2010). CLIL: Content and Language Integrated Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. DeFlorio-Hansen, Inez (2018). Teaching and Learning English in the Digital Age. Münster/ New York: Waxmann. Edelbrock, Iris (Ed.) (2017). Pathway Advanced: Lese- und Arbeitsbuch für die gymnasiale Oberstufe. Qualifikationsphase Sekundarstufe II. Includes film analysis software-DVD. Paderborn: Schöningh. Eisenmann, Maria & Meike Strohn (2012). “Promoting Learner Autonomy in Mixedability Classes by Using Webquests and Weblogs.” In: Katja Heim & Bernd Rüschoff (Eds.). Involving Language Learners: Success Stories and Constraint. Universitätsverlag Rhein Ruhr. 145-158. Eisenmann, Maria (2019). Teaching English: Differentiation and Individualisation. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh. Elsner, Daniela (2010). Englisch in der Grundschule unterrichten: Grundlagen, Methoden, Praxisbeispiele. München: Oldenbourg. Fritzen, Florentine (2021). “Lernfutter für den Lockdown: Online-Programme im Vergleich.” FAZ-NET, 25 Jan. [online] https: / / www.faz.net/ aktuell/ rhein-ma in/ wirtschaft/ online-programme-im-vergleich-lernfutter-fuer-den-lockdown- 17162708.html Gerngross, Günter, Herbert Puchta & Carmen Becker (2013). Playway 4 Pupil’s Book. Rum/ Innsbruck: Helbling, Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag. Gerngross, Günter, Herbert Puchta & Carmen Becker (2016). Playway 3 Activity Book. Includes audio-CD and TBT (DVD). Rum/ Innsbruck: Helbling, Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag. Gerngross, Günter, Herbert Puchta & Carmen Becker (2020). Playway 4 Activity Book “Fördern”. Rum/ Innsbruck: Helbling/ Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag. Includes online keycode to Playway Media App and Playway Learning Software. 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[online] https: / / www.kapiert.de/ German English-Textbooks and Their Digital Sphere 177 Westermanngruppe (s.d.). kapiert.de: Mit Schulbuch oder nach Kompetenzen lernen. Instruction for teachers. [online] https: / / www.kapiert.de/ broschueren/ Prospekt_Lehrer/ html5.html Ziai, Ramon et al. (2019). “The Impact of Spelling Correction and Task Context on Short Answer Assessment for Intelligent Tutoring Systems”. Proceedings of the 8 th Workshop on NLP for Computer Assisted Language Learning. Turku: LiU University Press. 93-99. [online] https: / / www.aclweb.org/ anthology/ W19-6310/ Jürgen Meyer Institut für Anglistik Universität Vechta