MASK – Modeling of Integrated Academic-Language Compentences

Project Description

With the increasing internationalisation of higher education, academic-linguistic competences of students are not only required in their first language (L1), but also in foreign and second languages (L2). English as a lingua franca is of particular importance here. In the area of international degree programmes, there have been studies on academic-language requirements, but these usually focus on the competencies of international students. On the other hand, the competence requirements of German students in the language of instruction English have not been researched in international degree programs.

Written language skills are of particular importance in the university context, especially the production of texts on the basis of previously read texts (reading-into-writing), both in German and English-speaking degree programmes. There is a broad consensus in the literature that academic literacy skills in L2 comprise several sub-skills and should therefore be considered multidimensional. In addition to writing skills, the construct includes reading skills. Furthermore, the construct is characterized by general foreign language skills, knowledge of discourse synthesis within specific cultural and sociolinguistic contexts, and the ability to interpret the context of writing tasks. However, there is a need for research on the question of whether academic literacy in L2 can be fully explained by the sum of underlying sub-competences, or whether additional specific competences are required to cope with the combined demands.

Project Objectives

The overall goal of the project is to empirically establish the competence construct underlying the successful completion of integrated academic-linguistic tasks in an English as a second language context. The core element for achieving this goal is the development and testing of valid criteria for assessing integrated writing products. Building on the work done in the first phase of the project, the continuation of the project will pursue four objectives to consolidate and extend the knowledge gained so far about the construct of academic-language competence: 

1. an in-depth analysis of the processes involved in the processing of integrated tasks
2. an in-depth investigation of the quality of human judgments made by raters with and without expertise
3. an in-depth investigation of the dimensionality of human judgments and computer-based text scoring
4. to develop models for predicting human judgments from computer-based analyses

Funding

Cooperations

This project is carried out in cooperation with...

• Dr. Ulf Kröhne (Centre for Technology Based Assessment (TBA))
• Prof. Torsten Zesch (FernUniversität in Hagen)
• Prof. Pablo Pirnay-Dummer (Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg)
• Valeriia Koval (University of Bremen)

Publications

Project Management

• Prof. Dr. Claudia Harsch
• Prof. Dr. Johannes Hartig

Project Team

Project Details