DE GRUYTER MOUTON Zeitschrift für angewandte Linguistik 2015; 63(1): 265–291 Caroline Schuttkowski*, Björn Rothstein, Anke Schmitz und Cornelia Gräsel Lautes Denken als Forschungsinstrument für grammatikdidaktische Fragestellungen? – Diskussion zweier Studien Two studies on think-aloud-investigations for research on language awareness DOI 10.1515/zfal-2015-0016 Abstract: Our subject in previous and present studies is the use of thinking- aloud-strategies in terms of language awareness. A central concern of studies regarding thinking-aloud-protocols is to demonstrate ways of approaching the complex thinking processes that underlie cognitively demanding tasks such as reading comprehension. In the context of our experiments several subjects have been asked to verbalize their thoughts when solving a problem or responding to a question. The results of our first experimental study show, that thinking- aloud-protocols cannot be used for research on language awareness when based on the specific knowledge of grammatical terms. Therefore in our present study the task construction has been revised so that the type of perception while thinking aloud is oriented on the text surface without using linguistic and grammatical terms. The results contribute to new concepts for the successful performance of thinking-aloud-strategies in grammar lessons. Keywords: think-aloud, language awareness, grammar teaching, conversion, cohesion *Korrespondenzautor: Caroline Schuttkowski, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germanistisches Institut, Germanistische Linguistik und Sprachdidaktik, Universitätsstraße 150, 44801 Bochum, E-mail: caroline.schuttkowski@rub.de Björn Rothstein, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germanistisches Institut, Germanistische Linguis- tik und Sprachdidaktik, Universitätsstraße 150, 44801 Bochum, E-mail: bjoern.rothstein@rub.de Anke Schmitz, Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Institut für Bildungsforschung, Gaußstr. 20, 42119 Wuppertal, E-mail: anke.schmitz@uni-wuppertal.de Cornelia Gräsel, Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Institut für Bildungsforschung, Gaußstr. 20, 42119 Wuppertal, E-mail: graesel@uni-wuppertal.de