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The major purpose of this paper is to explore conceptual syntheses that advance second language (L2) word recognition research and, in so doing, uncover new agendas relating to cross‐linguistic examinations of L2 processing. The paper first describes connections between word recognition and reading and the specific ways in which efficient word recognition contributes to comprehension performance. It then provides a brief overview of the connectionist construct and an expanded consideration of word recognition skills development from this vantage point. Further, it illustrates cross‐linguistic variations in word recognition processes by comparing and contrasting response patterns among readers in different orthographic systems. Finally, the paper explores conceptual frameworks for L2 word recognition, through which ongoing L2 empirical studies are subsequently examined.
ABSTRACT The work of researchers like Zamel (24) and Krashen (12) on the effectiveness of teacher feedback on second language writing does not support a focus on surface error to help students improve their writing. However, students of English as a Second Language (ESL) may come to U.S. institutions of higher education with a notion different from that of their teachers here about what kind of teacher responses will help them improve their writing. This paper presents the results of a survey of 100 ESL students in freshman composition classes, asking the students to analyze their sense of what kinds of paper marking techniques help them the most to improve their writing, which kinds of corrections they even read, which corrections they feel they retain best, and what reactions they have to positive and negative comments on both the form and the content of their writing. The results of this preliminary study suggest that these students equate good writing in English with error-free writing and, therefore, that they want and expect their composition teachers to correct all errors in their written work. This paper argues that a given teacher and class of students must agree about what constitutes improvement in writing and suggests that students' expectations may need to be modified if students are to profit from teacher feedback on their compositions.
ABSTRACT This study investigated the ways in which different writing tasks influence the quality and quantity of FL composition, as well as the writing strategies used by American college students when composing in Japanese as a foreign language. The purposes of the study were three-fold: (a) to compare qualitative and quantitative differences between descriptive and narrative writing tasks; (b) to describe linguistic and rhetorical requirements in each task; and (c) to identify the discourse strategies utilized in the tasks. Three types of text analyses demonstrated that the two tasks posed varying linguistic and cognitive requirements. This finding suggests that different linguistic competencies are required to perform varying writing tasks. The data also indicated that narrative discourse involves more demanding linguistic processing, at varying levels, than descriptive discourse. In addition, the analyses demonstrated that the ability to expand and elaborate preceding subtopics in discourse accounts, at least in part, for individual differences in FL composition aptitude. This ability, moreover, is related to knowledge of content-word meanings. These findings are consistent with those from reading comprehension research, both in L1 and L2, and thus support the view that reading and writing involve essentially similar processes of constructing meaning.
This study investigated the effects of 3 different writing tasks (descriptive, narrative, and expository) and 3 different writing prompts (bare, vocabulary, and prose model) on 937 writing samples culled from 330 novice learners enrolled in 15 classes of Levels 1 and 2 high school French. In order to assess the quality, fluency, syntactic complexity, and accuracy of the writing samples, the researchers employed 4 evaluation methods: holistic scoring, length of product, mean length of T-units, and percentage of correct T-units. Results indicate that the descriptive task was the easiest and the expository task the most difficult. The prose model prompts produced the highest mean scores, and the bare prompts produced the lowest mean scores. Based on these findings, the researchers question whether the description of a novice writer in the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines(1986) should be used as a blueprint for curriculum development and textbook construction for secondary novice foreign language learners.