Relationship between Learners’ German Language Communicative Abilities and Their Prior Performance in a National Ugandan Certificate Examination

This article presents research draws on the Communicative Approach to understand the connection between learners’ German language communicative abilities (GLCA) and their prior performance in German examinations.The purpose of the research was to   establish whether a relationship existed between learners’ prior performance in Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) German examinations and their performance on a GLCA testing tool. A correlational research design was used in this study. Findings indicated a significant relationship between learners’ prior performance on the UCE examination and their performance on the GLCA. Indeed, learners that performed better in the UCE examinations were also more likely to perform equally well on GLCA. It was concluded that during the process of preparing learners for UCE German examination, they acquired some basic competencies required to modestly communicate in real life situations. However, students lacked several other vital competencies that they needed to perform better in more challenging higher level communicative situations outside the classroom. Therefore, it was recommended that teachers of German be provided with a variety of authentic resources that could be used to enhance the teaching and assessing of German in real life related communicative contexts.