Writing and Writing Instruction in Different Academic Contexts
LANGUAGE AS A HIGHER ODER CONCERN: THE WRITING GROUP FOR ACADEMIC WRITING IN GERMAN LANGUAGE AS A HIGHER ORDER CONCERN: ENHANCING FEEDBACK WITHIN WRITING GROUPS USING A MULTILINGUAL, MULTIFACULTY, AND MULTIDEGREE LEVEL CONSTRUCT
Diana Koppelt¹, Anja Poloubotko², Abraham Brown³
¹Writing Center EuropaUniversität Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany ²Writing Center Leibniz University, Hannover, Germany ³Multilingual Writing Center, Leibniz University, Hannover, Germany
Writing centers are important institutions which support students in different stages of the writing process, often based on the peer tutoring method. German Universities, as they continue to internationalize, are faced with the challenge of supporting students write in German and English as a foreign or second language. To address this issue, the writing and language center at the EuropaUniversität Viadrina, in 2014, started: The Writing Group for Academic Writing in German . The focus is to concentrate on questions of academic writing and language throughout the writing process. Similarly, Leibniz University Hannover’s Multilingual Writing Center is offering a writing group with a twist that supports local and international students. The group will consist of students who are on different degree levels and from a variety of faculties and languages. Since there is little theoretical support for such a writing group construct, we plan on developing a research to ascertain the benefits that can be derived. In this workshop, we start by introducing the theoretical background around writing groups in general, and then we present our research question and hypotheses. Finally, we will discuss our learning experiences along with the positive and challenging aspects. Participants will be given the opportunity to discuss the relevance of such a group and how this method could be implemented in their institutions. Participants will not only become more familiar with writing groups, but will also be exposed to ideas and techniques that can be used to construct their own multilingual, multidisciplinary, multidegree level writing groups.
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