Author Bios, Figures and Tables, Acronyms Used, References

Abstract

This monograph presents in detail the genesis, design, and implementation of a full‐scale curricular innovation in a U.S. university German foreign language studies program, with a primary focus on writing development. Its goal is to demonstrate and articulate how college educators, from typically diverse scholarly persuasions, might conjointly craft a much‐needed response to calls for change in tertiary foreign language and cultural studies departments. After sketching the contemporary landscape of and challenges in collegiate foreign language studies, it theorizes an approach to educational design that is at once theoretically grounded in genre‐based literacy development, legitimately responsive to both literary‐cultural and language developmental values of faculty, and practically focused on student achievement of very advanced learning outcomes. Turning from ideation to application, the monograph then reports extensively on the actual curricular scope and sequence, genre‐based pedagogies, and associated assessment practices that were developed and implemented in a four‐year undergraduate German program. The emphasis throughout the monograph is on explaining why and how decisions were made while also demonstrating the outcomes of these decisions in the form of practicable educational efforts and products. It closes by arguing the need for additional inquiry‐driven program innovation of the sort reported here, if the value of college foreign language studies is to be enhanced, perpetuated, and, fundamentally, realized.