German Children’s Books: An Educational Linguistic Perspective

Summary

North American teachers often create classroom libraries of authentic children’s books for students to read in class or take home to practice reading. If those teachers instruct German as a second language, they have difficulty selecting books because there is no straightforward way for them to determine the difficulty of the book. In this talk, I provide an educational linguistic perspective to the problem, demonstrating how interdisciplinary research methods have emerged which can address this problem of practice. Drawing from my current study of the text complexity of German children’s books, I will outline how we are beginning to answer the question: what makes a German children’s book readable?

Guest seminar with Roswita Dressler, Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary.

Roswita Dressler is Professor in Language and Literacy and Associate Dean – International at the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary. Her research in educational linguistics examines pre-service and inservice teacher understandings of second language teaching and learning.

29 April, 15.00-16.00 (CET)

For more information, please contact Sergej Ivanov: sergej.ivanov@lnu.se