New Directions for L2 Research
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NEW DIRECTIONS FOR L2 RESEARCH Edited by SARAH RANSDELL Florida Atlantic University, USA & MARIE-LAURE BARBIER University of Lyon, France II TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE v Gert Rijlaarsdam AN INTRODUCTION TO NEW DIRECTIONS 1 FOR RESEARCH IN L2 WRITING Sarah Ransdell & Marie-Laure Barbier CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF L2 WRITING 11 PROCESS RESEARCH Julio Roca De Larios, Liz Murphy, & Javier Marin BUILDING AN EMPIRICALLY-BASED MODEL 49 OF EFL LEARNERS’ WRITING PROCESSES Miyuki Sasaki THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN BILINGUAL 81 CHILDREN’S READING AND WRITING IN THEIR TWO LANGUAGES Aydin Durgunoğlu, Montserrat Mir, & Sofia Ariño-Martin LINGUISTIC KNOWLEDGE, METACOGNITIVE KNOWLEDGE 101 AND RETRIEVAL SPEED IN L1, L2, AND EFL WRITING: A structural equation modelling approach Rob Schoonen, Amos van Gelderen, Kees de Glopper, Jan Hulstijn, Patrick Snellings, Annegien Simis, & Marie Stevenson EARLY EXPOSURE TO AN L2 PREDICTS GOOD L1 123 AS WELL AS GOOD L2 WRITING Rosario Arecco & Sarah Ransdell THE EFFECTS OF TRAINING A GOOD WORKING 133 MEMORY STRATEGY ON L1 and L2 WRITING Sarah Ransdell, Beverly Lavelle, & Michael Levy A COMPARISON BETWEEN NOTETAKING IN L1 145 AND L2 BY UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS Martine Faraco, Marie-Laure Barbier & Annie Piolat AN INTRODUCTION TO NEW DIRECTIONS FOR RESEARCH IN L2 WRITING iii COLLABORATIVE WRITING IN L2: 169 THE EFFECT OF GROUP INTERACTION ON TEXT QUALITY Folkert Kuiken & Ineke Vedder INVESTIGATING LEARNERS’ GOALS 179 IN THE CONTEXT OF ADULT SECOND-LANGUAGE WRITING Alister Cumming, Michael Busch, & Ally Zhou WHEN AND WHY TALKING CAN MAKE WRITING HARDER 179 Margaret Franken & Stephen Haslett A PROBLEM-POSING APPROACH TO USING 179 NATIVE LANGUAGE WRITING IN ENGLISH LITERACY INSTRUCTION Elizabeth Quintero REFERENCES 179 AUTHOR INDEX 179 SUBJECT INDEX 179 LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS 179 PREFACE GERT RIJLAARSDAM University of Amsterdam & Utrecht University, the Netherlands Multilingualism is becoming the default in our global world. The present-day global citizens use different languages in different situations. Apart from their mother tongue, they learn languages that give them access to other regions, nations, and worlds. In all countries of the European Union, for instance, at least one foreign lan- guage is mandatory in secondary schools. Most students are taught English as a for- eign language, the lingua franca in Europe. In large parts of the USA, students move from Spanish to English schooling. In parts of Canada, bilingual education is stan- dard. In Catalonia (Spain) children learn Catalonian and Spanish, in Hong Kong English and Chinese. The smaller the world becomes, the more languages are used and learned. For writing process research, this development into multilingualism entails at least two challenges. First of all, studying the relation between writing in L1 and L2 provides an opportunity for collaborative studies, in different language settings. Second, the issue of generalization of findings comes to the fore. It becomes evident now that we have unjustly neglected this issue in writing process research. We for- got to ask whether it is feasible to talk about ‘writing processes’ in general, without referring to the language of the written texts, and without taking into account the educational and linguistic culture in which these texts originate. If it is true that writ- ing processes are – to some extent – linguistically and culturally bound, then the implication is that our L1 (and L2!) process studies have a limited scope. Strangely enough, the issue of linguistically and culturally bound writing proc- esses has been disregarded for a long time. However, now our alarm bells are start- ing to ring, as soon as we consider the variable of ‘text quality’. For how do we de- fine quality of text?1 In Europe, the definition of a good argumentative text is deeply embedded in the various cultures. In short, and at the risk of overgeneralizing: the German argumentative text is a philosophical personal essay, the French argumenta- 1 Note that the IEA study in the 80s in which the quality of writing performance in several countries was compared, met large rating problems to reach a satisfactory reliable and valid level for an international report. VI RIJLAARSDAM tive text is defined by logical rationalism, and the British argumentative text is an empirical deductive text. These different versions of what constitutes a ‘good’ text are easily recognizable, even in contributions to European international journals. Let’s have a look ahead. In the near future, all students in European secondary edu- cation are taught at least one foreign language, in most cases two languages. One of these languages will be a variety of English. Via this variety, students will be able to communicate with other persons from other linguistic regions. As a consequence, all kinds of ‘Englishes’, ‘Spanishes’, ‘Chineses’ will come into existence. The master- ing of at least one international language will be decisive in the near future for ob- taining interesting jobs. As a result of this language movement, most students not only will learn to speak ‘English’, but also to write in ‘English’. And at this point writing researchers meet again. Here we have something in common, something that binds us, irrespective of the country we live in. How do students in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands connect their L1-writing-processes to their L2- writing-processes? Are there linguistico-cultural particularities, to what extent is the acquisition process a general cognitive process, independent from the particular L1 and the cultural schools of thought about what defines a ‘good text’? With the growing awareness that the global will be a multilingual one, in part domi- nated by varieties of English (or Spanish? Or Chinese?), we also stay acutely aware of the particularities of the various L1-situations and the limitations of generaliza- tion. As researchers, we seize the opportunity to develop research programs on writ- ing processes in L1 and L2, to be carried out in different language environ- ments/settings. These studies may reveal much about the extent in which L1- processes are influenced by linguistico-cultural factors, and at the same time, about the different ways in which students in various countries cope with L2 writing. This 11th volume in the series Studies of Writing provide us with research para- digms and findings from various regions, showing us that in different countries simi- lar but different linguistic situations have been tackled. Readers will find a variety of research designs and techniques to study the relation between writing in different languages. I hope this volume will inspire many readers to study the L1 and L2 rela- tionship in their particular environment. DEDICATION The editors of this volume would like to dedicate the book to their beloved chil- dren. Sarah Ransdell would like to dedicate the volume to Kirsten Elna Laursen and Erik Ejvind Laursen. Marie-Laure Barbier would like to dedicate the volume to Isia Mokhtar. AN INTRODUCTION TO NEW DIRECTIONS FOR RESEARCH IN L2 WRITING SARAH RANSDELL* & MARIE-LAURE BARBIER** *Florida Atlantic University, USA, **University of Lyon, France Abstract. The introduction gives an overview of the divergent research represented in the eleven chapters of this volume, including: A comparison of models of L1 and L2 writing; the parallel development of reading and writing skill; the impact of specific techniques to train L2 writing skill; note-taking and goal formation in L2 writing; metalinguistic awareness; peer interaction; and a problem-solving method for teaching L2. Psycholinguistic, linguistic, and pedagogically, based research findings in each chapter add to our theoretical understanding of the subject and provide implications generated by the research. This chapter discusses the complementarity of these research approaches, followed by a preview of the rest of the chapters, and finally presents two important questions for studying L2 writing. A critical review of new research is presented in Chapter 1. Then chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5 focus mainly on modeling the corre- lations between L1 writing skill components and L2 skill development and transfer. Chapters 6 through 11 discuss writers’ general cognitive abilities, resources, and goals in L1 and L2. These chapters include empirical research relevant to both educational applications and theoretical advances. Keywords: bilingualism, cognitive processing, education, English as a second language, foreign language writing, linguistics, psycholinguistics, research methods in psychology, second language (L2) writing, think-aloud protocols. 1 APPROACHES TO L2 WRITING STUDY 1.1 Pedagogical, linguistic and psycholinguistic as complementary approaches Second language (L2) writing encompasses a remarkably complex and variable set of behaviors. L2 writing research substantially benefits from the wide range of complementary approaches that have been used to study it. The majority of studies have concentrated on pedagogical issues in learning to write in L2 (e.g., Silva & Matsuda, 2001). Other prominent descriptive approaches focus on linguistic features of written texts in L2 within an educational setting (Genesee, 1994). Psycholinguis- S. Ransdell & M.-L. Barbier (2002). An introduction to new directions for research in L2 writing. In G. Rijlaarsdam (Series ed.) & S. Ransdell & M.-L. Barbier (Volume eds.), Studies in Writing, Volume 11: New Directions for Research in L2 Writing, 1 – 10 . © 2002. Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed