The Effects Of Writing On The Accuracy And Complexity Of Chinese EFL Learners' English

Since the late 1990's,the role of writing in foreign language learning has aroused much concern among some western SLA researchers and “writing to learn” has become an important topic of the studies abroad on the interface between L2 writing and second language acquisition.Almost around the same period,the Length Approach,the Continuation Task Approach and the Production-oriented Approach,somewhat related to the language learning potential of L2 writing,were advanced by Chinese scholars,but virtually independent of the L2-SLA interface study abroad.So far,quite a few studies on these approaches have been conducted in China.However,there are great differences between the domestic and the foreign researches in the starting point,theoretical perspective,emphasis and research method.In fact,“writing-to-learn” studies of the same kind as those abroad have hardly been carried out in our country.As to the existing studies abroad,their theoretical perspective is relatively simple as they have been made mainly in the cognitive dimension.Besides,there is still a lack of empirical researches on this issue,especially those comparing the effect of writing on language learning with that of other tasks such as reading and oral output.In view of the above,the present study attempts to explore the effect of writing on the accuracy and complexity of Chinese EFL learners' English through a comparison with reading,so as to test its language learning potential.To this aim,twenty-one English major freshmen were divided into three groups,namely the Reading Group(n=8),the Writing Group(n=7)and the Reading+Writing Group(n=6),and a “pretest-treatment-immediate posttest-delayed posttest” experiment design was employed.In addition,interviews with some of the subjects were also made to help understand the language learning mechanism of writing from both cognitive and sciocultural perspectives.The questions addressed in this study are as follows:(1)Can writing improve the accuracy and complexity of written production?(2)Does writing have a greater impact on accuracy and complexity than reading?The results show that(1)both the accuracy and complexity of the WritingGroup significantly improved in the immediate posttest compared with those in the pretest after five consecutive weeks of writing treatment,and instead of undergoing a usual decline,they increased slightly in the delayed posttest,indicating that writing,as an active learning activity which entails deep cognitive engagement,results not only in immediate improved performance but also in additional gains in accuracy and complexity over time by helping to enhance learners' awareness of linguistic form;(2)compared with its performance in the pretest,the accuracy and complexity of the Reading Group did not change significantly in both the immediate and the delayed posttest after five weeks' treatment,suggesting that reading is not quite effective in promoting the L2 development of those students who have become insensitive to the linguistic form in input perhaps not only because reading itself is mainly meaningoriented but also because the learners may have reached the plateau stage after about9 years of L2 learning in their primary and secondary schools;(3)the Reading+Writing Group presented the same trend in its improvement of accuracy and complexity as the Writing Group did but with the improvement even greater,implying that writing not only promotes L2 development directly but also indirectly,i.e.by reactivating the role of reading in language learning.In a word,writing can contribute to the improvement of accuracy and complexity and the combination of reading and writing may help to bring into fuller play the role of writing in foreign language learning.The above findings,on the one hand,provide empirical support for the language learning potential of L2 writing and our analysis from both the cognitive and the sociocultural perspective,on the other hand,is conducive to a more comprehensive and deeper understanding of its language learning mechanism.In addition,the present study,through examination and comparison of the effects of reading and writing on foreign language learning,may help to reveal the possible causes for the low efficiency of English teaching in colleges and universities in China,which has long been dominated by the input-driven approach and the communicative approach,thus providing a feasible way to improve the efficiency.