A Comparative Study Of The Use Of L1 In The Construction Of Texts Of Different Genres

Second language writing has always been an important research in second language acquisition.Some studies have shown that the genre of second language writing will have a certain impact on the quality of learners’ second language text.A certain argumentative genre will perform better than a narrative genre.This shows that different genres of writing have different cognitive processes.Second Language learners have a complex cognitive process when writing in the second language.In addition,previous studies on second language writing have found that second language learners often rely on their L1 in the process of writing.Although scholars have conducted in-depth research and discussion on this basis,and obtained rich scientific research achievements,there are still problems of students’ second language writing in actual teaching.As a result,a study of the cognitive processes of second language writing in different genres and a comparative study of the use of L1 in the writing process can provide some answers to the question of why the quality of argumentative text is better than that of narrative text for second language learners,and provide important implications for more effective writing teaching activities in the future.In view of this,under the guidance of the Cognition Hypothesis and Language Transfer,this thesis collects data using a variety of experimental methods,including thinking aloud and interview,and then conducts qualitative and quantitative analysis.The subjects of this research are 16 sophomore students majoring in English from a Shandong university who participate in the experiment of different genres of second language writing using the think-aloud method.The research aims to solve the following three questions:(1)What is the amount of L1 use in second language writing in the writing task of narration and argumentation?(2)Is the text quality of different genres related to the amount of L1 used?(3)What are the functions of L1 use in the writing of narration and argumentation?The results are as follows.First of all,according to the statistical results of the use of L1 in the think-aloud protocol,there is a great difference in the proportion of L1 use between the two genres.Argumentation relies more on L1 thinking than narration.Secondly,the item scores(including content,structure and language)of the subjects’ writing in two genres shows that the score of argumentation is higher than that of narration.Through the results on the correlation between the item scores of argumentation and the use of L1 in the process of idea-generating,idea-organization and sentence-constructing,it is found that there is a significant negative correlation between the language score and the use of L1 at the level of sentence-constructing(r=-0.87,ρ =0.01).The amount of L1 use at the level of idea-generating and idea-organization has a positive correlation with content score and structure score.As far as narration concerned,the amount of L1 use in idea-generating,idea-organization and sentence-constructing has a positive correlation with content score,structure score and language score.There was a significant positive correlation between the content score and the amount of L1 used in idea-generating(r = 0.69,ρ = 0.05).Finally,based on the think-aloud protocol,this thesis divides L1 functions into five categories: transformation medium,content generation medium,formal retrieval medium,content validation medium and program management medium,and counts the specific use of L1 in each medium.Argumentative writings use L1 as content validation medium,transformation medium and content generation medium,while narrative writings use L1 more for content generation medium,transformation medium and formal retrieval medium,in which content validation medium and transformation medium are directly related to text output.From the above findings,this study has practical significance.It can provide learners with some implications for better acquisition of narration and argumentation in English,and can also provide teachers with rational suggestions on how to conduct writing class.