Bausteine einer transdisziplinären Didaktik fachbezogener Textproduktion am Beispiel deutscher Geschäftsbriefe.

Abstract

The article explores the possibilities of building up curricula in the field of teaching LSP. It argues in favour of a transdisciplinary approach to didactic problems, basing its observations on the fact that the ever increasing amount of information in a globalised world puts increasing demands on the ability to master communication in proliferating discourse communities. The proliferation of discourse communities asks for better instruction in traditional fields of communication, including text-type awareness, not to mention the vocabularies of different professions, such as medical doctors, engineers, lawyers, journalists, technical editors, or secretaries. The article then moves on to distinguish between nine types of subsidiary competence to be reckoned with in the planning of curricula. It points out that in addition to the basic linguistic competence in a field of specialised language usage, these subsidiary competences play an increasing role in curriculum planning. These subsidiary competences are: 1. The social competence: the need for the participant in communication to recognise social situations and to gauge the own contribution according to social requirements. 2. The intercultural-communicative competence: the need to be aware of cultural differences in the use of a foreign language in the environment where the language is spoken. 3. The competence of a specialisation. This includes the awareness of special vocabulary and its use, coupled with an ability to assess degree of specialisation when addressing non-expert audiences. 4. The cognitive competence: the ability to acquire new knowledge and skills related to one’s own field of specialisation 5. The functional competence. This includes an awareness of intentionality joined with text-type awareness. 6. The textual competence, which may be described as the ability to view the coherence and cohesion of texts as a whole; the ability to plan and structure a text. 7. The syntactic competence; the knowledge of the requirements of a good grammar and the ability to apply that knowledge to text-type requirements. 8. The lexical-semantic competence. This includes not only an ability to apply the correct term in the right circumstance, but also an awareness of how terminology emerges, and how to apply search on the internet and search through data bases for adequate vocabulary. 9. The stylistic competence is a conglomerate of the above competences. On the stylistic competence of the learner will depend the richness, the effectiveness, the comprehensibility and the individuality of the letter. The conclusion of the article is that due to the transdisciplinary nature of the professional letter, a complete curriculum would be highly complex and beyond the scope of the present article. But the article nevertheless draws attention to the problems and hints at their solution.