Wörterbücher im Unterricht nutzen und eigene Wörterbuchartikel erstellen. Das Denkwerk-Projekt Schüler machen Wörterbücher – Wörterbücher machen Schule

Abstract

The article shows how the topic of dictionaries can be dealt with in German language teaching and how this subject has the potential to acquaint learners with a descriptive and data-driven perspective on language. The project Denkwerk, realized as cooperation among the Institute for German Language, the University of Mannheim and two regional secondary schools, fostered the students’ intellectual curiosity and their interest in discovering linguistic details. Using empirical methods like corpus analysis, pupils learned both how to write wiki-based dictionary articles on their own and how to publish them in the Denktionary, the dictionary of the project. Our contribution describes the didactic and organisational framework of the project, its aims and contents, its schedule of events, as well as the structure of dictionary articles in the Denktionary, and the observed advantages of such a wikibased system.