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Diana Šileikaitė-Kaishauri

Wissenschaftssprache lehren und lernen: Erfahrungen aus dem Fach Germanistik an der Universität Vilnius

Abstract This research paper deals from the didactic point of view with a model of academic writing implemented in the German Philology study programme at Vilnius University. Its purpose is to outline problems identified during the functional content analysis of the macrostructure of student research proposals for the final theses and to offer possible solutions. First, the paper briefly introduces the current state of research in academic writing skills as an important learning outcome in higher education. Second, after outlining important trends, Pohl’s (2007) model of analysing a paper’s introduction is discussed, as it serves as a basis for the research presented in this paper. The third step includes a description of the text corpus analysed. These texts are student research proposals (exposés) written for the methodical workshop focussing on research in progress. The corpus contains 74 texts (24 860 words in total) dated from 2009/2010 to 2013/2014. The requirements for the BA theses in German Philology at Vilnius University are also presented. The discussion of the results focuses on problems identified during the analysis of text macrostructure. For each problem, a solution is suggested. The paper is concluded by prospects involving possible tasks for further research.

Keywords: academic discourse, academic writing, didactics of academic writing, student research proposals, exposé, introduction to the final thesis, Vilnius University