Dorothee Voigts wins thesis award for her master thesis

In her thesis in the Master-of-Education programme, Dorothee Voigts, supervised by Prof. Carola Surkamp, has examined the subjective theories of English language teachers concerning action-oriented teaching in literature classes.



Action orientation is regarded as a core concept of foreign language education in Germany today. It aims at using the foreign language as a means of communication in a variety of authentic contexts as well as to explore literary texts in creative ways, for example, by acting them out. However, only a few empirical studies have examined how the concept is implemented in actual lessons so far, in particular with regards to the teaching and studying of literary texts, and how learners and teachers perceive those action-oriented lessons.
Ms Voigts has interviewed four English teachers of secondary schools in Göttingen on the basis of a guided questionnaire and analyzed the data via a qualitative content analysis. The thesis is outstanding and highly relevant for the research in foreign language education as it allows new insights into the relation of theory and practice of action-oriented teaching and learning settings. It is innovative due to the fact that there exist only a few empirical studies in the field of literary teaching in foreign language classes at all. Ms Voigts has proven her ability to conduct independent research of excellent quality.