Abridged Reader vs. Original Text in an AP German Section
You teach German 4 and AP German at a district where the 11th-grade honors section - 18 students, 12 of whom will sit the AP exam in May - has been reading Dürrenmatt's Der Besuch der alten Dame. The department owns 30 copies of an abridged A2 reader and exactly 12 copies of the original text. Last year's honors students who piloted the reader complained it was 'for babies.' This fall, the AP students who read the original averaged 62% on the unit test, and three admitted reading the English translation online. You have four weeks, three 45-minute periods per week. A parent has emailed objecting that the plot - a town voting to kill a woman's former lover for money - is 'morbid' and asking for an alternative assignment. Your principal forwards the email with 'let's discuss.'
1. Assign texts to the two groups and lay out the four weeks. Justify the split.
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Assign the original to the 12 AP students - the copy count forces this, but it is also right on the merits, since the AP reading list rewards sustained engagement with unadapted literary German. Assign the abridged reader to the six non-AP honors students, with three or four key scenes supplied from the original in photocopy so they are not sealed off from Dürrenmatt's actual sentences.
The 62% average tells you the problem was pacing and scaffolding, not text choice. Reading the whole play closely in four weeks with 12 periods is not realistic; reading it as a guided traverse is.
Week 1: pre-reading on the premise - a town's finances, the source of Ill's prosperity, what a 'Gemeinde' vote means - plus Act 1, with a character-and-money chart kept in German. Week 2: Act 2. Assign scenes rather than pages; students read the full act but are accountable in class for four set passages. Week 3: Act 3 plus a fifteen-minute excerpt from a filmed production, analyzed for staging choices, not plot. Week 4: a short essay in German on one of three prompts, drafted in class so you can see the German happening.
The non-AP group runs the same arc on the reader, joins the film excerpt, and writes a shorter response. Both groups sit the same final discussion, differentiated by question.
2. Three AP students read the English translation. What is the pedagogical problem, and what do you actually do?
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The problem is not cheating in the ordinary sense; it is construct substitution. The unit exists so students process German. Reading a translation lets them complete the tasks - plot questions, character questions, discussion - while bypassing the skill being built. That is why the 62% average and the translation use are probably connected: students who read English can discuss the play fluently and still fall apart on a line-level question about what a character actually said.
A proportionate response, in order:
- Separate the legitimate use from the illegitimate one. Reading a summary before a difficult act to build schema is a defensible pre-reading strategy. Substituting the translation for the German is not. Say this explicitly rather than moralizing about honesty.
- Change the assessment so it depends on the German. Ask questions that only the German wording answers: what Ill calls the town, the exact phrasing of the offer, a pronoun choice in a key exchange. Translation-users cannot answer these, and the students who did the reading are rewarded.
- Make the reading visible. Collect annotated texts with German marginal notes, use a five-minute unannounced passage translation at the start of a period, and require page-level citations in discussion.
- Do not run a witch hunt. You do not have proof about individuals beyond their own admission, and a public accusation would poison the class before the exam.
3. Draft the substance of your reply to the parent, and explain what you are trying to accomplish with it.
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Substance of the reply:
- Thank them, and confirm the student will not be asked to defend the play's premise personally.
- Clarify the plot: the town's vote is the play's central moral thought experiment, not an endorsement. Dürrenmatt wrote it as a satirical comedy about prosperity, collective responsibility, and how ordinary people rationalize an atrocity they would never commit individually. The 'morbid' element is the subject under examination, not the lesson.
- Note the placement: the play is a canonical text in German-language literature curricula and appears on AP reading lists; removing it would narrow the student's preparation relative to peers sitting the same exam.
- Offer a concrete accommodation that preserves rigor: a short alternative response task within the same unit (for example, an essay analyzing how the play stages the town's collective decision), or a pre-meeting to walk through the unit's framing before it begins.
- Do not offer exemption from the unit.
What the reply is doing: it separates the parent's objection about content from a request for alternative assessment, grants the reasonable part, and declines the part that would create an equity problem between this student and the other 17. It also documents the reasoning for the principal, who needs a defensible position rather than an outcome. Confirm the framing with the principal before sending, and keep the tone warm - this parent is engaged, which is an asset.