L1 and L2 writing fluency: A corpus-based comparative approach
(2022) 15th Biennial High Desert Linguistics Society Conference (HDLS 15) — Location: The University of New Mexico (USA) (11.November.2022)
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- For a long time, the dominant approach to writing was the product approach, which sees “writing as a textual product, a coherent arrangement of elements structured according to a system of rules” (Hyland 2009: 8). In the 1960s, however, another approach to writing became popular, namely the process approach, which sees writing as a “non-linear, exploratory and generative process whereby writers discover and reformulate their ideas as they attempt to approximate meaning” (Zamel 1983: 165). Such an approach recognizes the different stages that are necessary to end up with a written product, including planning, drafting, and revising. The earlier process-based studies relied on think-aloud protocols, consisting in asking subjects to express their thoughts aloud while they are writing a text, or stimulated recalls, in which the subjects have to recall, on the basis of some stimulus (typically, the text they produced), what their thoughts were while they were writing the text. These introspective methods, however, have been criticized for their artificial nature (e.g. Janssen et al. 1996). Moreover, they are often applied to a very small number of subjects, which may question the generalizability of such studies. Recently, the development of new computer technologies has made it possible to adopt a more ecologically valid method to collect information about the writing process, by recording the screen activity (screencasting) and the keyboard activity (keylogging) while subjects are typing a text. Since these techniques can be more easily applied to large numbers of subjects, they can also lead to larger-scale studies. In this presentation, use will be made of a corpus gathering screencast videos and keylog files in addition to the corresponding final texts. The data were collected from university students writing argumentative texts in their mother tongue (L1) and in English as an additional language (L2). This set of data produced by the same subjects in their L1 and the L2 is an ideal resource to investigate the possible links between L1 and L2 writing processes, an issue on which there is as yet no agreement in the literature. While some researchers argue that writing strategies are transferable from the L1 to the L2 and that L1 and L2 writing processes are therefore basically the same (see Sasaki 2000 for a review), others underline the differences between the L1 and L2 writing processes (Campbell 1990, Roca de Larios et al. 2008, Van Weijen 2009). The focus of this corpus-based comparison will be writing fluency, that is, how smooth the students’ writing process is. We will consider features such as the number, duration, and location of pauses or the number and type of revisions. These features will be compared in the process data produced by the same subjects in L1 and L2, so as to highlight any similarities due to students’ own way of writing, irrespective of the language, and possible language-specific differences.
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Gilquin, G. (2022). L1 and L2 writing fluency: A corpus-based comparative approach. 15th Biennial High Desert Linguistics Society Conference (HDLS 15), The University of New Mexico (USA). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/101602