Search

The book "Writing in Contexts" by Sandra Reitbrecht presents selected contributions from a conference in Vienna in 2019. The first part of the book deals with the modeling of writing contexts, while the second part addresses the exploration of writing contexts. The authors discuss various theoretical approaches and models for investigating writing processes. It is emphasized that context plays an important role in the modeling and exploration of writing processes. The third part of the book, which deals with the design of writing contexts, is not covered in this review. The text addresses various methodological problems in the field of writing and language analysis. It is pointed out that in writing didactics, the promotion of discourse-related competencies is often lacking, especially in foreign languages. It is also discussed whether cognitive processes can be investigated through thinking aloud. Furthermore, the significance of the language act of comparison in written exams is analyzed, and it is noted that transparency and clear criteria are often lacking. Finally, the necessity of appropriately addressing variation and precision in the school context is emphasized in order to prepare for academic writing at the university level. [Extracted from the article]

The aim of this study is to examine whether text analysis tools can be helpful in the selection of factual texts for learners of German as a Foreign Language in Asia. Text analysis tools make it possible to determine the level of difficulty of texts according to so-called readability formulae. A specially compiled collection of 50 essay texts were ranked by using these tools according to their level of difficulty. Out of these 50 texts six were chosen for a pair-wise comparison. University students in Thailand and China, majoring in German (n=47), assessed the texts in terms of their relative difficulty. Teachers of those students (n=10) were asked to do the same. The broad agreement of the rankings determined by the tools and by the participants shows that the use of internet tools can facilitate the selection of suitable texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]