International Journal of Language & Linguistics

Politeness Strategy: Modal Particles Acquisition of German Modal Particles through Self-Learning
Waltraud Brigitte Mayr

Abstract
Utilizing modal particles in communication can be regarded as a politeness strategy. Therefore, this study focuses on the teaching and learning of modal particles in the context of self-learning and communicative competence. Exploitation of spoken language samples of Bahasa Malaysia, the Indonesian and the Chinese language (Mandarin) is proposed in order to provide a source for deriving modal particles in authentic material of the learners’ own language and to arrive at detecting those particles in the German language. With the use of concordance procedures, patterns of collocation could be established qualitatively, whereas the quantitative analysis of the German samples has shown which particles occur most frequently in spoken German. The degree of target-like use of modal particles in Malaysian learners of German was then determined in learners’ selfrecorded videos. Results show that learners of German are able to detect and understand those modal particles in the samples and find equivalents in their own languages. The study contributes to the current issues concerning 1. Acquisition of meaning and usage of German word categories through self-learning and 2. The German mediation requirements: How can teaching of German at the workplace be improved in order to find solutions to language barrier?

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