Literary text preferences: A qualitative study on the cognitive and affective reasons for reading texts among GFL teacher training students

This study was conducted with German as a Foreign Language (DaF) teacher training students in their second academic year 2022 – 2023 at Necmettin Erbakan University. In order to understand their preferences for text types in the course German Literature I, a questionnaire with semi-structured questions was used. The questionnaire includes items about which author and literary text students prefer, why they make this choice, whether they are familiar with the author and aware of their language skills, as well as the theme and difficulty level of the texts. It also examines whether these texts can be used in the German Literature II course. The results of the study provide interesting insights into the preferences and opinions of the students. For example, Stefan Zweig was identified as the most read author, followed by Friedrich Wilhelm Mader and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The selection of texts was primarily based on themes, followed by author, easy accessibility via the internet, language and genre. Most students were already familiar with the authors of the selected works and the level of difficulty of the texts was mainly estimated in the B1-B2 range. Interestingly, when asked about the use of the texts in class, the majority of students (26 out of 41) thought that the readings were suitable for teaching German. However, a smaller proportion (6 out of 41) felt that the texts should not be used in class and 9 students indicated that they would have to think about it. The qualitative analysis of the question about the reasons for the difficulty of the texts showed that many students attributed the challenge to the high level of language and the use of advanced vocabulary. Some also emphasised the intensity of the emotions conveyed in the text, the literary presentation and the philosophical depth as reasons for the difficulty.