The development of textual competence in teaching German as a foreign language : evaluation by means of creative writing

The article is based on an empirical study on the development of textual competence of Bulgarian pupils. It is focussed on stories, written by pupils aged 14 to 17 years with different competence and knowledge in German as a foreign language. The authors can show that the length of the sentences rises by the age of the pupils. The complexity of the sentences grows with the increasing level of linguistic security. Further, it is probable that the text size depends on age and sex. The results also reveal the low efficiency of teaching German at primary school. Finally, it can be concluded that creative writing represents a useful method for testing textual competence in foreign language teaching