Intertextuality, intermediality and literacy

Intertextual understanding is a complex cognitive activity that requires readers to engage in various processes and representations. In addition to a content-based representation (inference-driven content-to-content connections), intertextual understanding also demands that individuals co-activate the origins of statements – on the one hand, extracting them as their own interpretative product (source-to-source connections) and, on the other, combining them with content through source-to-content connections. Intertextual understanding can therefore be modelled as a network. This article explores the concept from a theory-based product perspective and, drawing on the typology of document models, characterises the cognitive processes that individuals must theoretically perform, those they have empirically demonstrated, and the research questions that remain open.

A concept of text that extends beyond the written medium has now also found its way into educational guidelines. This development is largely due to literary methodology and pedagogy, which, since the 1990s, has strongly advocated for the integration of additional media into the traditionally book-focused German curriculum. In this context, intermediality has come into focus as an overarching concept that goes beyond mere intertextuality, encompassing various forms of connections between media. Literary methodology and pedagogy has primarily adopted philological categories such as plurimediality, intermedial reference, transposition and transmediality. Following an explanation of these developments and concepts, this article explores intermedial approaches to Goethe’s ballad Der Zauberlehrling (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice). The text’s broad presence across multiple media –  which borders on transmedial dissemination – is accorded special emphasis. Transpositions in picture books, recitations and films, for example, open up substantial possibilities for literature lessons that extend beyond written literary reading. The intermedial material related to Der Zauberlehrling is critically examined for potential in meaningful literary learning.

This article addresses the connection between intertextuality as literary theory and fan fiction as cultural practice within the digital space of online platforms. It explores the educational potential of fan fiction with regard to intertextual strategies. Central to the discussion  is an engagement with the intertextual relationships between original works of popular culture and fan-created texts, as well as their relevance for production-oriented writing instruction. 

This article offers a thematic analysis of the discourse resulting from individual interviews with eight primary school teachers in French-speaking Switzerland who work with pupils aged four to 12. We explore whether certain literary-cultural references in a work of children's literature can be deemed teachable or not. The pedagogical decisions made by these eight teachers shed light on current issues in teaching intertextuality to young pupils, especially on specific questions concerning the presence of heritage stories in picture books.

This article examines the production of literature for schools through the lens of the anthology reader, the primary medium for connecting with literature in schools. Two theoretical concepts guide the analysis of how literary prestige is constructed for authors in the school context: transtextuality, which explores how the anthology reader develops in opposition to pre-existing models, and amphitextuality, which concerns the relationship between authors and text excerpts appearing on the same page or within the same section of anthologies. The study employs a historical-didactic methodology and a comparative approach on two levels: first, it compares educational levels, including students of the same age but from different school types (the upper level of primary school and the lower level of secondary school); second, it analyses two linguistic regions of Switzerland – Italian-speaking Ticino and French-speaking Switzerland (with a focus on the canton of Geneva) – between 1860 and 1930.

This article addresses the question of which imaginative processes are triggered in listeners’ minds when picture books are read aloud. To answer this question, a theoretical framework is first established, clarifying key concepts (imagination, literary learning, image preferences in children, reading aloud). The empirical section then focuses on a study conducted at a primary school. Here read-aloud conversations are analysed to identify traces of imagination building, for example the emotional or associative formation of mental images.

Since 2018, media libraries of the School for Teacher Education BEJUNE (HEP-BEJUNE) have been developing the «story carpet», an original textile tool designed to foster children’s literature in the classroom. This article explains the concept of the story rug, presents the offerings of the HEP-BEJUNE media libraries and reflects on the cooperation so far, which provides teachers with possible applications especially for working with intertextuality.

The two authors of this article have been conducting a joint research project for several years which seeks to train students in the sensitive literary reading of a Latin poetic text. The teaching scenario consists of several steps: 1. The students analyse the poetic form and content of a Latin text in the original language, in this case, an excerpt from Book 1 of Virgil’s Aeneid; 2. They compare the Latin text with a modern literary or other work, analysing its means of expression – in this case, an excerpt from E.E. Schmitt’s Traversée des temps; 3. They use the knowledge and skills gained from both the Latin text and the other work to create a text on the same theme in the school’s general medium of instruction, which is, in this case, French.
The article explores the following question: Can the texts produced by students in the final step be considered intertextual, given that they are written with reference to other texts? To answer this question, the authors first clarify the concept of intertextuality. Next, they summarise the teaching scenario which leads the students to produce their texts before subsequently conducting micro- and macro-level analyses to determine intertextual references to the two texts studied. The analysis reveals that the students’ written output can indeed be considered intertextual and that the teaching scenario lends itself to fostering intertextual writing, regardless of the languages involved.

We can assume that coursebooks play a significant role in shaping the object of learning, the respective school subject. However, they also serve to shape and direct classroom work and ideally offer instruc-tors and students a solid basis for teaching and learning. The way they are implemented depends on (functional) assumptions or notions of effective coursebooks, which are often simplified, structured and visualised as (subject-specific) pedagogical models. 2016–2024 saw the (further) development and implementation of subject methodology models known as the ‘quality matrices’ [«Qualitätsquadranten»] and ‘language garden’ [«Sprachgarten»] in connection with the introduction of ‘Mediomatix’, the new coursebook series for Romansh. This paper introduces the models, offering first insights into how a part of the ‘language garden’ – the ‘parts of speech tree’ [«Baum der Wortarten»] – was implemented in Romansh coursebooks. We go on to critically discuss the ‘language garden’ and ‘parts of speech tree’ from the subject perspective and to evaluate their value for other languages from the perspective of language teaching methodology.

We can assume that coursebooks play a significant role in shaping the object of learning, the respective school subject. However, they also serve to shape and direct classroom work and ideally offer instructors and students a solid basis for teaching and learning. The way they are implemented depends on (functional) assumptions or notions of effective coursebooks, which are often simplified, structured and visualised as (subject-specific) pedagogical models. 2016–2024 saw the (further) development and implementation of subject methodology models known as the ‘quality matrices’ [«Qualitätsquadranten»] and ‘language garden’ [«Sprachgarten»] in connection with the introduction of ‘Mediomatix’, the new coursebook series for Romansh. This paper introduces the models, offering first insights into how a part of the ‘language garden’ – the ‘parts of speech tree’ [«Baum der Wortarten»] – was implemented in Romansh coursebooks. We go on to critically discuss the ‘language garden’ and ‘parts of speech tree’ from the subject perspective and to evaluate their value for other languages from the perspective of language teaching methodology.

We can assume that coursebooks play a significant role in shaping the object of learning, the respective school subject. However, they also serve to shape and direct classroom work and ideally offer instructors and students a solid basis for teaching and learning. The way they are implemented depends on (functional) assumptions or notions of effective coursebooks, which are often simplified, structured and visualised as (subject-specific) pedagogical models. 2016–2024 saw the (further) development and implementation of subject methodology models known as the ‘quality matrices’ [«Qualitätsquadranten»] and ‘language garden’ [«Sprachgarten»] in connection with the introduction of ‘Mediomatix’, the new coursebook series for Romansh. This paper introduces the models, offering first insights into how a part of the ‘language garden’ – the ‘parts of speech tree’ [«Baum der Wortarten»] – was implemented in Romansh coursebooks. We go on to critically discuss the ‘language garden’ and ‘parts of speech tree’ from the subject perspective and to evaluate their value for other languages from the perspec-tive of language teaching methodology.