An Investigation Of Interaction Between Text Features Of L1 And L2 Of Chinese Senior Students

Most previous studies of L1 and L2 writing have investigated L1's positive transfer to L2 from the perspective of vocabulary or syntax, and have regarded L1 writing ability as an important factor to influence L2 writing. However, hardly have these studies discussed text features, neither have they showed whether there is interaction between L1 and L2 writing. This study examines possible interaction between L1(Chinese) and L2(English) text features writing ability. 120 senior students from Chongqing Bashu Middle School, all with intermediate level EFL proficiency, formed four groups with: (1) intensive experience writing essays in both L1 and L2, (2) advanced L1 experience and poor L2 experience, (3) advanced L2 experience and poor L1 experience, and (4) poor experience in both L1 and L2.Students with both L1 and L2 intensive experience wrote significantly longer essays that were more coherently structured and developed than the other groups with richly elaborated support in both their L1 essays and their L2 essays.Students with only advanced L1 experience wrote quite coherent L1 essays with good organization and developed support or elaboration(not as well as Group 1), while their L2 essays were well-organized and coherent but they lacked as well developed support or elaboration as their L1 essays;Those with only advanced L2 experience wrote coherent L2 essays with good organization and developed support or elaboration (not as good as Group 1). Their L1 essays were coherent and well organized, but they lacked elaborated support for their points;And students with no advanced experience with either L1 or L2 tended to write papers with poor organization and undeveloped support and elaboration both in their L1 essays and L2 essays.Moreover, when we compared the L1 essays written by students of advanced writing experience only in L2(Group3) with the L1 essays written by students of neither L1 advanced experience nor L2(Group4) advanced experience, we found the former essays were better in all the aspects of organization, coherence, and support or elaboration. Likewise, when we compared the L2 essays written by students of only L1 advanced writing experience(Group2) with the L2 essays written by students of neither L1 nor L2 advanced writing experience(Group4), we found the former essays were better in all the aspects of organization, coherence, and support or elaboration.That was to say, students with L1 writing advanced experience did better in L2 text features writing than students with no L1 writing advanced experience did, and students with L2 writing advanced experience did better in L1 text features writing than students with no L2 writing advanced experience did. It was suggested that there is positive transfer from language learners'L1 text features writing to their L2 text features writing, and there is also positive transfer from language learners'L2 text features writing to their L1 text features writing. That is to say, there is interrelation between L1 text features writing and L2 text features writing.