Innovative Methods and Practices of Academic Writing and Writing Instruction
INTERACTIVE EDITING: A STRATEGY FOR SUPPORTING PROFESSORS AT A GERMAN TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY
Karl Hughes¹, Heidi Minning²
¹Technische Universität München ²Technische Universität München
Our institution, a technical university in Germany at which 30 of 90 Masters’ Programs are currently delivered in English, has committed itself to increasing this amount to 100 percent by 2020. The ‘focusonthewriter’ strategy practiced in writing centers around the world has not met with wide acceptance among university professors at our institution, who need to instruct students and publish in English despite not feeling confident of their command of the language (Tribble 2009, McDonough 2010). Instead, we have endeavored to package our writing support as an ‘interactive editing’ service with a focus on text production, but in which the author is not neglected. In this way, professors are encouraged to accept feedback with the long term strategy of becoming more autonomous writers, rather than being dependent on external editing services. One successful strategy has been to encourage clients to produce an initial text in English or failing that, a base translation in order to ensure maximum investment in their production. Our presentation will outline types of intervention involved in interactive editing and suggest ways in which the service could be further developed.
References
Tribble, C. (2009) Writing Academic Englisha survey review of current published materials. ELT Journal, Vol. 63/4, pp.400417. OUP
McDonough, J. (2010) English for specific purposes: a survey review of current materials. ELT Journal, Vol. 64/4, pp. 462477. OUP