Toegepaste Taalwetenschap in Artikelen - Volume 72, Issue 1, 2004

In the context of recent studies on writing to learn, concept maps are constructed in an attempt to make knowledge structures and conceptual change explicit. These graphic representations are based on the concepts and semantic relations in a student's text. However, a concept map does not give insight into the rhetorical text structure and other rhetorical features, nor does it show the way concepts are located and connected in this structure. Since the dialectic between content knowledge and rhetoricalknowledge is essential in the process of 'knowledge transforming', and consequently conceptual change, an analysis tool that integrates both analysis of rhetorical textstructure and of semantic structures in text is needed. In a pilot study of a forthcomingresearch project about writing to learn in the content areas in primary education, aninstrument was designed for integrated text analysis and graphic representation. Theanalysis and representations were demonstrated with data collected from ll-to-12 yearold students, who wrote an explanatory text for younger students about a climate issue.Revision was triggered by asking the student whether he expected a younger pupil tounderstand the written explanation. An analysis and graphic representations of twotexts written by two different students focused on location and use of concepts,expansions of meaning of these concepts, and connections between concepts throughcoherence relations, all embedded in the rhetorical text structure. It was concluded thatthe analysis tool proposed here makes it possible to compare students' knowledgestructures and accordingly can provide insight into conceptual changes, relative towriting.

According to Robinson's Cognition Hypothesis of task-based L2 development,cognitively more demanding tasks will lead to the use of lexically and syntactically morecomplex language (Robinson 2001a, 2001b, in press). A different viewpoint is held bySkehan (1998) and Skehan & Foster (1999, 2001), who hypothesize that the moreattention is required for a task because of its cognitive complexity, the less complex willbe the linguistic output. The present research focuses on the relationship between taskcomplexity and linguistic performance in L1 and L2 writing. We report on an experiment carried out among 51 Dutch university students of Italian as a second language. The test included two writing tasks, in which cognitive task complexity was manipulated by varying the number of elements to be described and the required reasoning demands. Pre-existing knowledge of Italian was established by means of a pre-test. In the article, the results and theoretical and pedagogical implications of the study are discussed.

The relationship between children's oral and written language use may be considered as one of the main issues in the study of literacy development. In this paper, the focus is on how 10-year-old children (grade 5) create a textual context in oral and written narratives for their recipients. The first aim of this research was to find out what kind of practices children use to contextualize their stories. The second aim was to compare the practices in the oral and written mode, to determine to what extent children at this age still rely on oral language practices in their written texts. A dependent group design was used to make a comparison between the practices in both conditions possible, while in both conditions the same story was retold. Results show that the children were able to contextualize their stories in the oral as well as in the written mode, but that some contextualization practices (such as the avoidance of exophoric references, and the use of dialogue) were more frequently found in the written mode of the stories. Besides, it was found that the sequence of the oral and written task was an important variable, but not in the expected way. The oral texts were influenced by the written texts (greater length, more dialogue, but also more exophoric references); the written texts, however, did not show any influence from the oral texts. The conclusion might be that we have to reconsider the relationship between children's oral and written language use at this age.

In this article, we discuss a course in academic writing for third-year students of Italian L2 at the university of Amsterdam. During the course, the students produce five argumentative texts. These texts are the end product of a series of tasks which cover the various stages of the writing process. Each task is subject to feedback. Feedback is given in different ways, but peer-peer review is an important feature of this course. The repetition of the writing process and the cooperation and interaction in the performing of the tasks enhance the students' awareness of the argumentative and formal aspects of writing and of their own language skills.

In this article, I discuss the theoretical assumptions and the functioning of a dialogue-based approach of faculty development in a Communication-in-the-Disciplines project at the Science faculty of the University of Groningen. Through cooperation and interaction with and between faculty, the project team focused on making adjustments to courses, developing assignments, feedback- and assessment methods, teaching material and study program policy. This approach is based on the assumption that interaction, cooperation and the exchange of experiences and ideas with and between faculty lead to consciousness with regard to the function of teaching communication in the disciplines and with regard to faculty's roles in teaching communication skills in the disciplines. In conclusion, I argue for further discourse-analytical research into the functioning of dialogues in faculty development with regard to teaching communication in the disciplines.

In this contribution, I give a sketchy account, based on personal experiences, of four characteristics of electronic texts and the problems they pose for composers and readers: 1. Discussion lists on Internet forums, and the problem of recovering interesting fragments; 2. The (overused) bulleted list; 3. Collaborative writing of public documents as a kind of completing a form; 4. The use of informal style in documents on the Internet. The remainder of this contribution is devoted to the question how much attention is given to these topics in the teaching of composition and communication and in language use research.

This article focuses on the development of a language portfolio for teachers in primaty education. Portfolios are being used more and more in education, particularly in higher education. But also in primary education, a language portfolio for pupils (which has been accredited by the European Council) has been introduced and turned out to be useful, especially in schools with a multicultural population. Following the same guidelines as in the pupil's portfolio, a language portfolio for teachers has been developed. The first version of this portfolio has been used in a small-scale evaluation. It turned out that the language portfolio for teachers can function as an instrument for the evaluation and documentation of the language, didactic and cultural knowledge, and skills of teachers. Teachers can use the portfolio to assess their own proficiencies and to collect and store documentation of their proficiencies. Major differences were foundin the views of language teachers in primary schools (teachers of Turkish and Arabic) and those of general teachers. The latter group expressed their doubts about the usefulness of the language portfolio in their teaching situation, as teaching language (meaning: teaching English) is only a small part of their task. Recent developments in primary education, however, seem to point to a growing importance of languages in this type of education. In this case, language portfolios could prove to be useful instruments.