120003 SE MEd 03: SE Applied Research Seminar (2023S)

While Austrian school learners seem to be generally improving in their English proficiency, several large-scale surveys (e.g., E8 Bildungsstandards) find that writing in English remains the area of greatest difficulty. This course aims to study writing in the L2 in detail in order to enhance future teachers’ understanding of
a) the differences between learning to write and writing to learn (general language learning vs. bilingual literacy development)
b) the diverse aspects of the L2 written product and means of studying these (including, for instance, the role of lexical density, the role of genre, etc.)
c) the diverse aspects of the process of writing in the L2 and means of studying these (including, for instance, the role of think-aloud protocols, eye-tracking and key-stroke logging procedures, perception data, etc.)
Based on this understanding, we will review and investigate current teaching practices with regard to L2 writing prevalent at Austrian schools.
Students will get to know a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to studying L2 writing and be able to apply these to real student data. Students will be able to design a small-scale research study in this area, including developing research questions, collecting suitable data and analysing these data within a theoretical framework. Basic research skills, like literature search, evaluation and synthesis, will be reviewed. Students will learn to relate research findings to teaching practice in a meaningful manner.
(Note that this is course is the ‘general’ seminar in the MEd and NOT about providing specific support for your MEd theses. This is addressed in the MA thesis seminar)
Methods: mini-lectures, presentations, readings, interactive discussion, pair work, group work, individual and pair assignments, group research project