ReadingWritingReading. The close link between teaching literature and teaching writing as a vital step to managing literacy.

Submitted by: Elfriede Witschel
Abstract: One of the basic goals when teaching literature is literary education, whereas the predominant question still seems to be how to enhance understanding of literature as such. Peter Elbow suggests that if reading and writing in academic or school culture “work productively together as equals”, both reading and writing will benefit (2000, p. 281).
This connection between reading and writing in special arrangements of tasks is focused upon in a qualitative study carried out with upper secondary students between 2013 and 2014. It is based on a multi-method design consisting of interviews with students (n = 29) and their teachers (n = 4), an intervention in four classes with an arrangement of tasks each, a questionnaire (n =83) and a linguistic text analysis of students’ text products (n=40) in contrast to a comparison group (n = 40).
The following research questions, among others, served as predominant starting points:
• What is the relevance of intertwining reading - writing - reading when teaching reading and when teaching writing as Abraham (2013) suggests?
• What are the effects of oral and written subtasks when reading literary texts in students’ reception and production processes?
• To what extent are students’ textual skills empowered by writing short texts, „Hilfstexte“, as they are called by Bräuer and Schindler (2011, p. 14)?
• What is the effect of this way of working with literature on students’ approaches to literature in general and their ability to write their own texts? Is it possible to combine literature and learning and thus achieve what Spinner calls “literary competence” (2006, p. 7)?
The theoretical model developed for this intervention study is based on the assumption that the connection between reading, speaking and writing not only facilitates both the reading and the writing process, but also improves the written products.
The talk is going to introduce some selected results gleaned from the completed study carried out with secondary students. It will focus on task arrangements for literary texts and the resulting text products, an interpretation and a text analysis. It will look at the effects on the processes (questionnaire) and the text products (linguistic analyses) that can be traced back to the tasks in which reading, writing and speaking have been intertwined.
With the help of some selected results it can be shown that reading and writing processes have been facilitated with regard to
• students’ understanding of the texts,
• students’ ability to formulate their ideas and
• students’ meta-cognitive understanding.
The text analyses on the other hand show that – in comparison to texts produced without arrangements of tasks – the text products were of a better quality in three respects: with regard to content and understanding of the original text, coherence, language and intertextual reference.

Works Cited
Abraham, U. (2013). Textkompetenz. Texte verstehen, nutzen und erstellen können. Informationen zur Deutschdidaktik 4/37. Jg, 12–21.
Bräuer, G. & Schindler K. (2011). Authentische Schreibaufgaben – ein Konzept. In Bräuer, G., & Schindler K. (Eds.). Schreibarrangements für Schule, Hochschule, Beruf, (pp. 12-63). Freiburg im Breisgau: Fillibach.
Elbow, P. (2000). Everyone can write. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
Spinner, K. H. (2006). Literarisches Lernen. Praxis Deutsch 200, 6-16.