Übungsgrammatiken Deutsch als Fremdsprache: Wie sie sind und wie sie sein könnten

The article provides a survey of the most important characteristics of didactic grammars of German as a foreign language. Mostly, didactic grammars are structured according to the grammatical themes which are analyzed in current reference grammars, that is following the traditional word classes. However, didactic grammars differ from reference grammars mainly by their selection of grammatical phenomena, by their simplification of grammatical rules and by their avoidance of specifically linguistic terminology; moreover they aim at an illustrative presentation and contain various kind of exercises. German grammars are traditionally classified as either Grundstufe (basic level, A1-B1) or Mittelstufe (intermediate-advanced level, B2-C1). At the end of the survey, five desiderata are formulated according to different kinds of adequacy a didactic grammar should take into account: correctness of grammatical rules, consideration of semantic-functional aspects, attention to variational phenomena, didactic usefulness of the rules expounded, progression of contents according to learners' levels.