A Quantitative Analysis Of L1 Use In L2 Writing Process

Second language writing is always an important part in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA). In the latest decades, numerous studies have reached a consensus that second language (L2) writing process is a bilingual event. The ESL (English as a second language) learners always tend to rely on their first language (L1) when composing in L2. However, these studies just point out this phenomenon rather than conduct an in-depth research.The present study, therefore, aims to investigate 16 English-major writers (5 males and 11 females) through a combination of research techniques with the think-aloud method, retrospective interviews and questionnaires, with an attempt to quantify the amount of L1 use in L2 writing process and explore the variation of L1 with thinking activities and L2 proficiency.The procedures of data collection are divided into four steps:think-aloud training, composition writing, retrospective interviews and questionnaires. In order to ensure the reliability of the data, all the protocols we have collected are transcribed and processed by two assistants. Then we input these data into the statistical device (SPSS 15.0) for further analyses. Three results are concluded as follows:(1) L1 is extensively used in L2 writing process. For the 16 participants in this study, L1 use accounts for, on average, about 39.60% of their think-aloud protocols.(2) The proportion of L1 use declines gradually from low to high proficiency, which means that lower-level writers tend to rely more on L1 than higher-level ones.(3) L2 writing process is divided into four categories of thinking activities: idea-generating, text-organizing, language-using and process-commenting. Overwhelmingly, L1 use in language-using activity has negative correlation with the final scores:the more L1 the writers adopt in the language-using activity, the lower score they get in the composing process.Based on the above findings and incorporating previous theories (Flower & Hayes,1981; Wang & Wen,2002), a revised model of L2 writing process is proposed, which is hoped to contribute to the teaching and learning of L2 writing.