TIMO

This project conducted an in-depth analysis of the corpus collected in the SiMO project. All 2166 writing samples in German and 607 in Turkish, composed by 322 6th-grade students, were re-analysed in terms of revision process. It examined types of revisions undertaken in both German and Turkish and how they related to the original texts and intervention support over time as well as to individual writer characteristics. Of special relevance were interlingual commonalities and differences in revision processes.

A further aim of the follow-up project was to develop a didactical model for interlingual support when revising texts. This model was primarily designed for German majority-language classes, Turkish heritage-language classes, and English as a foreign language classes, but can also be applied to all language classes.

In the first phase of the project, a corpus analysis which categorised text revisions was conducted. Of interest were the revision processes of deleting, copying, changing and expanding elements in the original texts. These actions were classified in both German and Turkish text products and compared intra- and interlingually. Language-specific revisions, such as the use of expressions that diverge from the original texts, were also investigated. They were analysed solely in the German texts, as such expressions are not comparable across languages.

Results of the project provide evidence for both language-specific and cross-linguistic aspects of text revision.

First, participating students seemed to prefer certain revision processes. This was the case for revising in both languages, but depended on the semantic content being revised. This preference was largely independent of school type, first language and text quality. 

Second, most students revised texts by changing and expanding the original texts. However, there were some difference between the intervention groups in the German texts. The group which received only a form-based intervention used suggested forms in their revised texts at a higher rate than the other groups — although even here, the use of such ‘parallel’ forms remained fairly low (25 %). This indicates that students generally considered how to change texts independently of the material-based intervention suggestions.

Third, the best predictor of text revisions in the Turkish-German bilingual group was not the semantic context (as it was in the monolingual analysis of German texts), but rather which revision processes had been chosen in the other language. Thus, revision processes were similar for both languages, indicating that revision is, at least to some extent, an interlingual skill.

The most significant practical implication of the TimO project is the verification of a strong link between text revision processes in the languages of bilingual pupils. Turkish-German students carried out similar revisions in both their languages, indicating that revision is a skill which is transversal. Combined with the findings from the SimO project, it can be concluded that writing skills can be supported across languages. In this case, such support was successful when it was carried out in the language in which reading and writing were first developed, i.e. in the majority language German. A blueprint for such support is contained in the pedagogical model developed as part of this project.

A further significant implication is the observation that, even when specific formulations are provided in learning materials, students largely produced text segments which were independent of the material. Thus, individual creativity does not seem to be dampened by the provision of formulation sugges- tions, but rather may be seen as a springboard for the generation of (new) ideas by developing writers.

Marx, N. (2019). (Wie) sind sprachenübergreifende Schreibfähigkeiten lehr- und lernbar? In ÖdaF-Mitteilungen 34 (2), S. 91-96. https://doi.org/10.14220/odaf.2018.34.2.91. 

Marx, N. & Steinhoff, T. (2019). Monolinguale Schreibförderung mit bilingualem Lernpotential. In Fremdsprache Deutsch 60, S. 8-14.