IOSR Journal of Research & Method in Education (IOSR-JRME) e- ISSN: 2320–7388,p-ISSN: 2320–737X Volume 8, Issue 5 Ver. I. (Sep. – Oct. 2018), PP 45-60 www.iosrjournals.org DOI: 10.9790/7388-0805014560 www.iosrjournals.org 45 | Page The effectiveness of doppeltblicken/intercultural to teaching of German second language to university students in Zimbabwe Yemurai Chikwangura, Luke Odiemo Okunya, Shaban Mayanja International Journal of Languages’ Education and Teaching Corresponding Author: 1 yemurai Chikwangura Abstract:This paper validates the effectiveness of doppeltblicken/intercultural teaching of German as second language in Zimbabwe with University of Zimbabwe as the case. Literary texts play a significant role in the learning of a language. Yet students studying German at University of Zimbabwe (UZ) exhibit difficulties when it comes to reading and analyzing texts written in German. This has largely been attributed to the cultural differences between Germany and Zimbabwe. It was hypothesised that an intercultural/Doppeltblicken(in German) and “Double look“ (in English) to learning a foreign language through literary texts offers a better approach to learners of German as foreign language. This approach added an intercultural communicative skill that enhanced their capability to relate competently with people from different cultural backgrounds. It aimed to enlighten students studying German about the need to create a cultural dialogue between Germany and Zimbabwe through literary texts thereby enhancing their target language proficiency. A comparative case study involving 13 students of German as second language was conducted using repeated measures design to evaluate the effectiveness of Doppeltblicken vis-avis the traditional methods used at the university of Zimbabwe. Participants took a pre-test after being taught in a traditional way whose results were compared to the post test that was taken after going through the Doppeltblicken pedagogy. Their performance was either recoded as“low“,“medium“ or“high“. In the pretest, only 13.5% participants scored high, 44.3% were rated as medium and 42.3% as low. In the post test, 25.0% were rated high, 71.2% as medium with only 3.8% being low.Participants recorded a higher meanscore on the post-test than the pretest. The significance of difference in means for pre and post test through t-test was t= 4.0523, df=4, p= .0016.It was concluded that intercultural approach was more effective at teaching German as a second language since it added intercultural communicative competence. Key words: doppeltblicken/intercultural approach, teaching, learning, intercultural communicative competence, foreign language --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date of Submission: 01-09-2018 Date of acceptance: 17-09-2018 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I. Introduction and Background In their class by class analysis of use of literature by the students of German at the University of Zim- babwe (UZ), Arich-Gerz and Chikwangura-Gwatirisa (2015) found that learners of German as second language at the UZ exhibited great difficulties in analyzing literary texts written in German. This was because for some students, they had never undertaken literary studies before yet the level of German used in texts such as those by Kafka was too difficult to comprehend. Students’ general proficiency in the use of German language for every- day communicative purposes did not seem to translate into the ability to study and critically examine literary texts. It was against this background that this study sought to investigate the current methods used in teaching German Literature in Zimbabwe to learners of German as second language with a view of assessing the effec- tiveness of teaching methods based on the intercultural approach and its operational concept of double look “Doppeltblicken” (Kreutzer 2009). Current teaching methods traditionally at UZ were teacher-centered and text analysis technique had proven ineffective at equipping learners with the necessary proficiency in German (Arich-Gerz and Chikwangu- ra-Gwatirisa2015).Third year students of German as a foreign language are taught German literature using short texts and/or poems. In poetry, the focus is on identifying and analyzing rhythm and rhyme schemes, whereas in short stories, the students simply write a summary and comment on the broached themes without necessarily considering figures of speech and other narratological devices and techniques. Due to limited vocabulary and lack of analytical tools in literature, emphasis is inevitably placed solely on text comprehension (Arich-Gerz and Chikwangura-Gwatirisa 2015). By highlighting this disconnect and apparent deficiency, the study attempts to think through these stumbling blocks with the aim of producing and suggesting a pedagogical approach that assists both lecturers and learners of German as they dealt with literary texts. Didactics of literature examine the methodology of teaching literature (teacher perspective) and critically analyzing literary texts (learner perspec-