Investigation On The Involvement Of L1 Thinking In The Continuation Task

The role of first language in the process of second language acquisition has been an issue of considerable controversies over past decades.This study thus endeavors to extend current work on first language in second language writing by investigating the involvement of L1 thinking in an innovative writing task—the continuation task.A total of 46 intermediate-level Chinese learners of English as a second language from a foreign language college in South China participated in present study and were randomly assigned to three groups: CE group,CC group,and CP group.The CE group was required to read an incomplete story in English and continue it in English;the CC group was required to read the Chinese version of the story and continue it in English;the CP group was required to read three successive pictures which depicted the incomplete story used in the CC and CE group,and continue it in English.Data was collected through four steps: 1)a questionnaire was handed out to get the participants' background information;2)participants were trained to think aloud for about two hours;3)participants qualified for the think-aloud method were then invited to take part in the formal writing process;4)post-writing questionnaire,retrospective interview and stimulated recall were administered immediately after the writing session.Data were analyzed in three steps: 1)think-aloud protocols were transcribed for quantitative and qualitative analysis,and the percentages of the Chinese words among all the words in each think-aloud protocol segment were calculated based on Antconc 3.4.4 and the Language Technology Platform(LTP);2)An one-way ANOVA and post hoc LSD test were performed on the percentages of overall L1 thinking;a Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA or a Mann-Whitney U test and post hoc Dunn-Bonferroni test were performed on the percentages of L1 thinking in each individual composing processes,so that any statistical difference among the three tasks can be obtained 3)a Spearman's correlation test was run to determine the relationship between the percentages of L1 thinking and L2 text length.The major findings of the study are as follows:(1)A large sum of L1 thinking was found in the intermediate-level L2 learners' composing process;(2)There was a significant difference in the proportion of L1 thinking between the CE group and the CC group,CP group;no significant difference was found between the CP group and the CC group;and(3)L1 thinking was negatively correlated with L2 text length.That is to say,the more L1 thinking,the longer the writing text.On the basis of the above all findings,it is concluded that the continuation task which combines comprehension with production,can arouse L2 learners' conscious attention to the gap between their inter-language and target language on the one hand,and by providing context and linguistic help,enables L2 learners to bridge the gap on the other.This in turn provides them with the opportunities to use English structures and expressions in an authentic English context and thus reduced their over-reliance on L1-based knowledge for scaffolding assistance during L2 writing process.