Learning and Teaching Strategy Usage in Multilingual Professional Writing

With a particular focus on German as a foreign or second language

Researcher: Sabine Dengscherz

The ability to produce professional written texts is becoming more and more important in our quickly changing information society. Those who wish to effectively communicate with others must be able to express themselves precisely and eloquently. This can be quite challenging – especially when writing in a second language. Successful multilingual writers have elaborated their individual strategies of dealing with theses challenges. Assuming various means of producing professional texts, my research aims to explore individual process as well as strategy and language usage in multilingual professional writing, in order to develop didactic concepts that support individual improvement. The research is focused on writing in German as a second language in academic contexts, though other languages are included as well (primarily English, French and Hungarian).

The data shall be elicited in a complex mixed methods approach to be carried out in 4 phases (for details see project phases 1–4).

The research is based at the University of Vienna: foremost at the Centre for Translation Studies, and partly at the Department of German Philology (German as a Second Language). The results of the work are focused on learning and teaching professional writing in German (as a second/foreign language) in multilingual contexts, though, on a meta-level, they shall have an impact on writing in other languages as well.