Written Expression (Intermediate), WS 2025/2026

This course should more realistically be called Text Production, as that is precisely what it deals with: the production of texts. The theoretical foundation of the course is Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), as developed by M.A.K. Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan in collaboration with many other scholars; it is part of an autochthonous British school of linguistics that is sometimes referred to in German as Britischer Kontextualismus. Within the SFL tradition there is an approach that has come to be known as genre-based literacy pedagogy. I am critical of some of the theoretical shortcuts of this approach, but I acknowledge its stellar success rates in transforming underperforming junior secondary level students at socially disadvantaged schools into top university entrance examination performers.

The course will be conducted mostly in hybrid mode; participants can either attend in person or follow the course virtually via meetings on MS Teams. This teaching mode is not without its difficulties, but it provides more flexibility for participants. During the first few weeks only, an asynchronous online participation would be possible, with students working through the materials at their own pace. It is possible that I may have to switch to purely online teaching for a week or two at one point in the semester. In that case, for those students who are on campus, I would make sure there is an accessible space where you can work online.

Meetings for the course will take place at the following time:

Wednesdays 10:15-11:45

We will meet in:

Building A2 2, Room 1.22 Sprachlabor

and/or

the MS Teams meeting that will appear in your MS Teams calendar.

Please make sure you are registered on LSF and try to keep in regular contact with me via email or other means.

The course materials include slides, reading exercises, and various worksheets. The worksheets are voluntary, and do not constitute part of the portfolio you have to produce in order to pass the course. But note that the content of each worksheet will typically become the subject of the discussion at some point during the following meeting, so it is advisable to at least look at each worksheet and think about it ...

This semester I plan to experiment with a variety of new in-class activities, including the use of ChatGPT. Students attending in person should have something to write with (pen, paper), or have a laptop or tablet with them if they prefer a paperless approach.

Following the advice of both students and colleagues, I plan to revert to my old practice of asking everyone to submit each piece of work twice. The first time, I will comment on your text without giving you a grade. The second time, I will grade your work. Between the first and the second submission we will have a chance to discuss in greater detail the specific problems the text presents.

The course will be structured in a number of blocks:

The first block will involve exchanging contact details and making decisions about communication channels and frequency of contact. We will also finalise the overall timing of the writing assignments.

The second block will involve becoming more familiar with the basic concepts of Systemic Functional Linguistics and genre-based literacy pedagogy. There are two parallel access routes here — there will be reading material, as well as slide shows. This block will also involve weekly exercise sheets — some of these will be questions on the reading material, others will involve analysing certain aspects of four short texts. During this part of the course, it would be theoretically possible for students to work at their own pace and in their own time, but by the end of the second block we will definitely have fully transitioned to synchronous learning via face-to-face meetings in the classroom with simultaneous videoconferences on MS Teams for those unable to attend in person.

The third block will consist of four major tasks, such as writing (or rewriting or editing) texts belonging to four different genres. We will explore the conventions of each genre and look at the regions of English vocabulary and grammar that the genre in question tends to foreground. Your grades for these tasks will form the basis for your overal grade.

The fourth block will be the briefest, and will consist of general feedback. We will discuss grades, as well as arrangements for sending your results to the examinations office.

All materials will be made available here on the course website. If students express a strong preference for “having all the courses in one place on Moodle”, then I could set up an empty shell on Moodle which would simply point you to the course website. I must apologize for my laziness here—this is my 75th semester of teaching; I am now in fact in retirement; and students have still not yet made up their minds whether they prefer Moodle or MS Teams; and all of these different technologies require an enormous investment of time, a commodity which I no longer have. I will therefore continue my time-honoured practice of hand-coding both website and handouts in TeX.

Plan for Winter Semester 2025:

The plan for winter semester will be finalised after the first few meetings. In the mean time, you can get an idea of the overall structure of the courses by consulting the plan for summer semester 2025:

http://www.spence.saar.de/courses/writtenexpression/plan20251/index.pdf

Materials for Week 01 (15.10.2025):

All the materials you need for Week 01 can be found in this directory:

http://spence.saar.de/courses/writtenexpression/unit01_20252

You might like to look at the contents of subdirectories B through I first, and download anything you haven’t got yet. Subdirectory J contains screen recordings of me going through the contents for Week 01 and taking you through the slides (which are in subdirectory G as a PDF file, along with a printer-friendly PDF file that contains all the information from the slides formatted more economically). Due to an acute lack of time, I have had to use recordings that have been ‘recycled’ from previous semesters; I hope this causes no problems.

Subdirectory K contains some pictures of some of the people you will meet (virtually) in this course.

Please let me know if you have any issues that may affect your progress this semester. My main focus at the moment is on making my materials more accessible to students with dyslexia or colour-blindness, while attempting to conform more closely to the ‘Corporate Design’ of Saarland University.

If there are any other problems, just contact me.

Materials for Week 02 (22.10.2025):

All the materials you need for Week 02 can be found in this directory:

http://spence.saar.de/courses/writtenexpression/unit02_20252

Subdirectory A contains the questions on chapter 2 of the initial reading material – you already have the whole of the reading material, from last week. Chapter 2 is concerned with the functions of language.

Subdirectory B contains the slides for this week and a printout of their content. These slides complement the reading material, without however being perfectly aligned with it (either in terms of timing from week to week, or in terms of the concepts used).

Subdirectory C contains an extra handout – one page containing five crucially important paragraphs by Saussure in the original French; and another page containing the English translation of them, sitting next to a diagram that I would normally draw on the whiteboard at the beginning of every class, because it is the most important diagram of all.

In subdirectory D you will find some short screen recordings (recycled from previous semesters).

The materials for the rest of the semester will be uploaded shortly.