The development of temporal-spatial meaning in personal recounts of beginning L2 writers of German

Abstract

Personal recounts represent a core narrative genre that novice L2 learners typically encounter when learning about everyday experiences in the target culture. Expressing a “journey of significance” (Rothery & Stenglin, 1997, p. 248) through a succession of well-defined events, recounts are ideal textual environments for beginning learners to practice verb forms and cohesive devices (e.g., Abdel-Malek, 2019). A key feature of recounts are temporal-spatial circumstantial meanings, often realized lexico-grammatically through adverbial and prepositional phrases that guide movement through a sequence of habitual actions and reported happenings. While circumstances enhance (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004) recounts by providing additional details to situate events, L2 learners sometimes avoid producing these meanings (Gleason, 2014).Adopting an Integrated Performance Assessment (Adair-Hauck, Glisan, & Troyan, 2013) and genre-based approach (Martin, 2009; Martin & Rose, 2008), this study explores how collegiate beginning L2 learners of German develop their ability to write stories of travel experiences. Data come from two second-semester German classes in fall 2019 (n = 10). Pre- and post-tests of learners’ written recounts of their own vacation experiences provide information about learners’ developing facility with the genre, including the ability to produce temporal-spatial meaning discursively. Implications for supporting and evaluating beginning L2 learners’ narrative writing within Integrated Performance Assessments are offered.