How can text competence be fostered in a more efficient and effective manner? This book is among the first to combine the US-American discourse on this question with the German discourse. The topics covered range from text linguistic foundations via text comprehension and comprehensibility to text production, writing skills development and writing in a second or foreign language. Students interested in writing research will be introduced to the pertinent models and theories. Writing instructors, writing centre staff and subject-domain teachers will find guidance on how to improve their assignments and feedback. University administrators and program coordinators can inform themselves about best-practice approaches to writing instruction and support at different levels ranging from individual courses to central support structures.

ContentsIntroduction: The objective and scope of this bookPart I: Textlinguistic Foundations1Basic concepts1.1Text linguistics and text1.2TextualityPart II: Text Comprehension and Text Comprehensibility2Levels of text processing2.1The legibility of texts2.2The readability of texts2.3Text comprehension as a constructive process3Text processing from a cognitive-science perspective3.1Propositional models of text processing3.2The structure of the human mind3.3The model of cyclic processing3.4Network models3.5Semantic macro-structures3.6Schema-theoretical approaches3.7The theory of mental models3.8Levels of comprehension3.9Concluding remarks4Text processing from the perspective of instructional psychology 4.1The Hamburg psychologists' empirical inductive approach4.2Groeben's theoretical deductive approach4.3The Karlsruhe comprehensibility concept5Methods of comprehensibility assessment5.1Target-group-focused methods of comprehensibility assessmentPart III: Text Production6Writing (process) models6.1Hayes& Flower's (1980) writing process model6.2Hayes' (1996) writing process model6.3Cooper& Matsuhashi's (1983) writing process model6.4Günther's (1993) phrase-oriented production system (POPS)6.5Bereiter& Scardamalia's (19987) models of beginners' and advanced writers' composing processes6.6An instruction-oriented writing process model7Writing competence development models7.1Writing development stages according to Bereiter (1980)7.2Kellogg's (2008) macro-stages of writing competence development7.3McCutchens' s (1996) capacity theory of writing (development) 7.4Writing competence development from the perspective of dynamic systems theory7.5Academic writing competence development from a corpus-linguistic product-oriented perspective7.6Alexander's (2003) Model of Domain Learning7.7The bioecological model of human development and its implications for modelling writing competence development7.8SummaryPart IV: Writing Instruction8Best-practice approaches to writing instruction8.1A theoretical framework for literacy pedagogy: multiliteracies8.2Teaching for transfer8.3Approaches to writing instruction at the macro-level8.4Approaches to writing instruction at the meso-level8.5Approaches to writing instruction at the micro-level8.6Writing-intensive seminars and the role of the teacher2078.7Assignments for writing courses and writing-intensive seminars8.8Giving feedbackPart V: L1 vs. L2 writing9Writing in the L1 vs. writing in the L29.1Differences between writing in the L1 and the L29.2Translation into the L2 vs. composing in the L29.3Translation from the L1 as a subprocess of writing in the L29.4An explanatory model of EFL writing ability9.5Quality losses in L2 writing and the potential role of translation for writing instruction, text quality improvement and epistemic purposes9.6L2 writing pedagogyReferencesIndex