A Study Of Chinese College Students’ English Writing Process Based On Think-aloud Protocols

English(L2) writing is an important part in English teaching and learning, which is also regarded as a difficult language skill to acquire by both Chinese teachers and learners. The research objects of L2 writing include the writing process and the writing result. Most research on L2 writing both at home and abroad focuses on the analysis and deduction of the writing result, and very little attention has been paid to the writing process, which is worthy of more verification and validation.This paper conducts a study of the English writing process of 24 Chinese college ESL students with different L2 proficiency whose mother tongue is Chinese(L1) divided into four groups including vocational college students, non-English major undergraduates, English major undergraduates and English postgraduates by way of think-aloud protocols, questionnaires and retrospective interviews, aiming to investigate the situation of L1 use, the relationship between L1 use and L2 text quality, and L2 writing difficulties.24 participants were required to accomplish one propositional L2 composition adopting think-aloud technique. The entire writing process was recorded and transcribed. SPSS was employed to conduct a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data obtained from the experiment including think-aloud protocols, questionnaires and retrospective interviews, making a horizontal and vertical comparison. The findings are listed as follows:1) The L2 writing process of Chinese college students is a complex cognitive process involving both L1 and L2, and L1 is extensively used by all the participants including the more proficient English-major postgraduates. Specifically speaking, L1 is used in the composing activities of task-examining, idea-generating, idea-organizing, text-generating and process-controlling. L1 use is dominant in such thinking activities as process-controlling, idea-generating, idea-organizing and task-examining, while L2 is more used than L1 in text-generating.2) In general, with the improvement of L2, L1 use decreases in L2 writing process. However, L1 use varies in different composing activities. L1 use declines in the thinking activities of idea-generating, idea-organizing, text-generating and process-controlling with the increase of L2 proficiency, while the variation of L1 use in task-examining is not significant.3) L1 use is negatively correlated with L2 text quality on the whole, but the negative relation between L1 use in different thinking activities and L2 quality is not significant.4) All the participants think they will utilize L1 during L2 writing process, though they hold different opinions on the effect of L1 use on L2 writing.5) The students may meet L2 writing difficulties in content, structure and language, with the difficulty in structure being the greatest. Generally, the correlation between the students’ belief upon L2 writing difficulties and their L2 proficiency is not significant.Based on the above findings, some constructive suggestions are made for L2 classroom teaching and L2 teaching of writing. Firstly, L2 use should be advocated in L2 classroom teaching. However, the role of L1 use during L2 learning can not be denied completely. After all, the development of L2 use is a gradual process. Secondly, the teachers should have a better understanding of the students’ L2 writing difficulties, provide more guidance and writing practices for the students and pay an increasing attention to the teaching of vocabulary and sentence patterns, improving the students’ L2 writing skills.