No abstract

Many students in vocational education and training (VET) have difficulties with reading and writing. To date, there is little research on whether and how the development of VET students’ writing skills may benefit from teaching approaches that integrate reading and writing. This study reports results from a semester-long intervention study conducted in Switzerland in 2018/19 (N = 285) in which we investigated the impact of a scenario-based integration of reading-to-write-tasks on the development of VET students’ text quality. In the approach, problem-solving processes are set in motion by scenarios representing real- or work-life situations. Reading-to-write tasks form part of the student-initiated problem-solving process, and result in situated argumentative writing. A small experimental intervention effect was found where text quality developed significantly better in the experimental group than in a matched control group (F1,178 = 7.40, p < .01, Cohen’s f = 0.20), as measured in a writing test before and after exposure to the teaching method. Outcomes suggest tangible benefits may result when applying this approach to literacy education in VET, particularly for academically weaker students. We discuss the consequences and implications of these findings, as well as open questions to be addressed by further research.

The encoding of motion events is known to be challenging for second language (L2) users, particularly if the lexicalization patterns of their first language (L1) diverge from those of the L2. This paper analyzes oral and written motion event descriptions produced by advanced L2 users of German, an information-dense satellite-framed language. Based on L2 usage and error patterns, we discuss six major challenges with respect to motion event encoding and, more specifically, path encoding. These challenges clearly go beyond event construal and the acquisition of the basic satellite-framed lexicalization pattern (e.g., verb semantics) as well as beyond expected challenges related to the use of prepositional phrases (e.g., prepositional semantics, case marking). Advanced L2 users actually particularly struggle with “smaller” path encoding devices such as particles, locative and directional adverbs, their formal and functional differentiation, their usage patterns and combinatorial potential. These aspects seem to be challenging for advanced L2 users of German with either verb-framed L1s (French, Spanish) or satellite-framed L1s (Danish, English). We therefore discuss characteristics of the target language input that might explain why L2 users struggle with identifying and differentiating these path encoding devices, their usage, and combinatorial patterns. We sketch potential implications for L2 teaching.