dieS Summer School 2015

Material-supported writing from a performance perspective

In the upper secondary level, the connection between reading and writing plays an important role against the background of scientific propaedeutic goals and in concrete preparation for the writing of specialized papers (school) and scientific texts (university). The didactic goal is the development and promotion of text competence. Methodically, this goal is to be achieved via the task type Materialgestütztes Schreiben (material-based writing ), whereby informative or argumentative texts are written (cf. KMK 2012, BiSta). If we look at the type of task from the perspective of writing research and research on text comprehension and include the cognitive processes involved, it becomes clear that in material-supported writing, texts are not merely read and written. Rather, the task type makes complex demands on the writers: For example, they must be able to construct multiple mental representations on the basis of a set of materials, the material basis of which can consist of texts as well as graphics, tables, or pictures. Furthermore, information has to be selected from the material set, organized and integrated into one's own text (cf. Segev-Miller 2004).

In addition to its application as a learning task, the material-supported writing task type can also be used in performance contexts, e.g., the written Abitur examination. Performance tasks for material-based writing will be part of the Abitur task collection commissioned by the KMK starting in 2015, and will also be part of the Abitur task pool of the Länder starting in the 2016/2017 school year. In accordance with the educational standards, the tasks will be anchored domain-specifically in the area of literature as well as language and will be available to the states in the forms of informative and argumentative material-supported writing at basic as well as increased requirement levels.

In the lecture, the conditions that enter into the conception of performance tasks for material-supported writing (here: the written Abitur examination) will be pointed out, concrete realizations of exemplary tasks under the conditions of the performance situation will be presented and discussed, and hypotheses will be formulated that can be introduced from the perspective of didactic-empirical writing research into the research of the task type and relevant (cognitive) processes involved.

References:

KMK (2012). Educational standards in the subject German for the Allgemeine Hochschulreife. Munich, Neuwied.

Segev-Miller, R. (2004). Writing from sources. The effect of explicit instruction on college students' processes and products. Educational Studies in Language and Literature, 4, 5-33.

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