Writing in a foreign language: linguistic and cognitive aspects

Teacher(s)

Degand Elisabeth;

Language

Dutch

Main themes

This course focuses on the active transmission of German-language literary and/or theatrical texts in their particular historical and cultural context, using analytical methods to favour communicate about those texts, orally and in writing.  
Based on a thematic and corpus that will vary from year to year, it will take an all-encompassing look at both the canonical text itself and its contemporary adaptations, for example in the cinema or in graphic novels.  
Questions of content will always be addressed in their interaction with writing and creation processes . 

Learning outcomes

At the end of this learning unit, the student is able to :

By the end of this learning unit, students will have mastered a particular issue of German literature in its cultural context and both from a diachronic and synchronic perspective, in relation to the present day. They will also have developed specific skills relating to the communication of contents, for example by writing lively reviews or critiques relating to the themes covered.  This learning unit contributes to the development and command of the following skills and learning outcomes of the ELAL programmes (ELAL learning outcomes): 1.1; 1.2; 1.4; 1.5; 2.1; 2.7; 4.1; 4.3; 5.1; 5.3; 5.6; 6.1

Content

The seminar addresses the linguistic proficiency and cognitive mastery factors influencing foreign language writing. After an overview of the research question, students will develop a research plan and test a discourse production elicitation task in Dutch as a foreign language.  The students will develop the experimental protocol, the recruitment of participants and the experimental implementation. Data analysis will be done individually with each student taking responsibility for a specific part of the analysis. The impact of factors will be measured on the presence/absence of linguistic traits to be defined. 

Teaching methods

Research seminar consisting of discussions of the experimental theories and methods presented, one of which will be replicated by the students involving all stages of the experimental protocol: 

• definition of the research question and hypotheses 
• preparation of the experimental material and/or items 
• recruitment of participants 
• conducting the experiment 
• analysis of the data 
• presentation of the results 

Evaluation methods

Oral presentation et written research report

Bibliography

Portfolio sur Moodle

Faculty or entity

> ELAL