Process Oriented Discourse Analysis

We will work on material from schools, colleges/universities and the professional world. The main focus of the course is dual – partly to develop a theoretical perspective on text development and written language development, and partly to be able to use analytical tools to stimulate this development. The practical use of these tools can be illustrated by the response phase in the process-oriented teaching of writing. Here response on preliminary drafts is important for developing the potential of the work, and thus students’ potential as writers. Emphasis is placed on giving students a balanced and educated attitude towards the analytical tools through independent work to bring out the potential for the development of different types of texts. Because of this, analysis of specific writing processes will be integrated into the instruction. Collecting the material for this work will be done in cooperation with the students.

The aim of the course is to provide theoretical and practical insight in analyzing texts while they are being produced. This insight gives the background for forming constructive feedback, and for understanding how written communication processes are carried out and can be developed.

Lectures and seminars. More on assessment: Obligatory analysis assignment must be approved before the student can sit the written exam. The size of this assignment must be between 10-15 typed A4-pages (line spacing 1.5). The exam is a combination of three fact-/term-based short questions, and a longer discussion-/analysis-based essay question. When determining the final grade the short questions count 1/4 and the essay question 3/4. In special cases, students may apply to the Department for alternative assessment in the form of a take-home exam.