HENA03888U English - Free topic : Foreign Language Acquisition: Writing in a Foreign Language: Process and Product

Literacy skills form an important part of the teaching of English as a foreign language in the Danish sixth-form college. Therefore, the aim of this course is to give participants a specialised background for discussing, evaluating and researching different aspects of writing in a foreign language. The focus of the course will be on writing processes and on the written product (the student essay). Theoretical models of writing processes and empirical investigations of these processes with regard to writing in the foreign language as well as in the mother tongue will be dealt with. The written product will be discussed in relation to discourse analysis and in relation to empirical studies of student texts. To appreciate results of empirical investigations of writing in a foreign language, familiarity with research methods is essential. To illustrate some of the issues, learner data from a research project at our department will be used. Finally the question of the language learning potential of writing in a foreign language will be addressed and implications for the foreign language classroom will be discussed. For some participants the course might provide inspiration for research projects in relation to their thesis ('speciale') and students are most welcome to use data from the above-mentioned project for their research. The course will be conducted using a mixture of lectures, group work and discussions. Readings will mainly consist of a number of research articles on the course topics, selected from scholarly journals.