This paper reports on the motivation and beliefs in the traditional and distance learning and teaching of German as a foreign language (GFL) at Singidunum University in Serbia. The conclusion is that between the students in the distance course (experimental group) and those in the traditional course (control group) no statistically significant difference was shown in terms of any changes in their motivation, satisfaction with the quality of teaching and time spent learning German. As indicated in the findings, the course materials and interest in German were top of the list of motivating factors, while lack of self-discipline was identified as the most demotivating factor. The study also reveals that the beliefs held by Serbian students about their ‘ought self’ do not reflect the perceptions of their ‘actual self’ as traditional and distance GFL learners. The paper underlines important pedagogical implications regarding the enhancement of students’ metacognitive strategies, course design and assessment.

The post globalization era has introduced a compression of time and space, and accompanying aftermaths like the mobility of the workforce, internationalization of education and cross-cultural interactions. Technically adept engineers, with linguistic and inter/cross-cultural competence, are the need of the hour. But in Indian technical universities, the role of foreign languages is yet to be clearly defined and a study of why a particular foreign language is chosen by learners has to be analysed to understand the needs of those learners. This study, conducted in a private technical university in south India, tries to determine the needs of the learners who study German as a Foreign Language (GFL) as part of their undergraduate engineering course. The study finds that the learners are aware of their needs and that there is a gap in the content delivered through the courses. This calls for a revision in the content delivered, the way the courses are offered and in the overall approach towards language learning. Redesigning German language instruction in technical universities in tune with the learners’ needs helps in the development of a contextual curriculum, thereby fortifying the skills of the engineers to become globally competent employees and citizens.

In the L2 classroom, cultural learning – learning about societies’ items, acts, expressions and their underlying beliefs and values – is often assumed to take place as students learn and engage with a language and discuss texts. With the advent of the Internet and Web 2.0, however, cultural learning can intentionally be integrated in the L2 classroom by making students active participants in the learning process. This article, a reflection and summary of a course, describes the implementation and effects of bookmapping in an intermediate German class to facilitate cultural learning. Bookmapping is the process of following a novels’ protagonist(s) movement on a map, either on paper or online. The focus of the class was Germany’s Ruhrgebiet (Ruhr area); for the assignment, students collaboratively bookmapped Frank Goosen’s novel Radio Heimat – Geschichten von Zuhause along with secondary texts discussed in class. After briefly outlining the course and explaining the mechanism of bookmapping, this article describes how bookmapping was implemented in an L2 classroom. The second part evaluates the maps created by the students and discusses the results from student reflections. The conclusion highlights possible benefits of incorporating bookmapping in the classroom to teach students about culture.