Writing as learning to know: Tracing knowledge construction in L2 German compositions

Abstract

Taking the position that meaning-making, knowing, and content learning are fundamentally linked to language, this article explores writing as knowledge construction within the educational context of a college-level German program. The department's ongoing Humanities Assessment Project aims to trace the development of cultural content through the development of second language writing abilities. We report on the two interrelated components of the study, currently focused at the early advanced level of proficiency: a holistic framework created by the department's educators, and a linguistically oriented investigation that is grounded in systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and draws on its construct of grammatical metaphor (GM) for tracing knowledge creation in texts. Quantitative analysis of GM occurrence in the rated essays and analysis of syntactic complexity offer inconclusive results with regard to differentiating the quality of multiperspectival and reflective knowledge construction in the essays. However, qualitative exploration of the deployment of GM demonstrates its role as a resource in two forms of knowledge construction, the conceptual refiguration of content and the textual configuration of this content into knowledge. The article concludes with programmatic, research methodological, and pedagogical implications of the study.