This study investigated whether task complexity influences second language (L2) writers’ fluency, pausing, and revision behaviors and the cognitive processes underlying these behaviors; whether task complexity affects linguistic complexity of written output; and whether relationships between writing behaviors and linguistic complexity are moderated by task complexity. Participants were 73 advanced L2 writers, who completed simple or complex essay tasks. Task complexity was operationalized as the absence versus presence of content support. Participants’ writing behaviors were recorded via keystroke logging software. Four writers, drawn from groups performing simple and complex tasks, additionally engaged in stimulated recall. Content support was found to lead to less pausing, more revision, and increased linguistic complexity. When content support was absent, more frequent pauses and revisions were associated with less sophisticated lexis. These results, combined with stimulated recall comments, suggest that content support likely reduced processing burden on planning processes, facilitating attention to linguistic encoding. Open Practices This article has been awarded an Open Materials badge. All materials are publicly accessible in the IRIS digital repository at http://www.iris-database.org. Learn more about the Open Practices badges from the Center for Open Science: https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki.

A B S T R A C TThis study investigates how the lexical and syntactic characteristics of L2 learners' academic writing change over the course of a one-month long intensive English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programme at a British university. The participants were asked to produce two argumentative essays, at the beginning and at the end of the EAP course, which were analyzed using measures that are theoretically motivated by previous research in corpus linguistics, systemic functional linguistics, and developmental child language acquisition. The results indicate improvements, with regard to lexical diversity, both for intermediate-level students who were preparing for undergraduate university studies in the UK and upper-intermediate level participants who were planning to continue their studies at postgraduate level. The academic argumentative texts of the students in the lower proficiency group also demonstrate development in noun-phrase complexity and in the use of genre-specific syntactic constructions. The findings suggest that despite no explicit focus on lexis and syntax in the EAP programme, by the end of the course the students' writing exhibited a developmentally more advanced repertoire of lexical and syntactic choices that are characteristic of expository texts in academic contexts.

This study examines second language (L2) learners’ perceptions of their writing strategies on an intensive English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programme at a British university. The participants were 14 Chinese pre-undergraduate students who engaged in interviews and completed reflective journal entries. The results of the analyses indicate that after four weeks of studying on the EAP course, students believed that they started to apply a broader range of writing strategies, such as reading extensively, using exemplars of student writing to inform their own assignments, revising in a more focused manner and appreciating tutor feedback on their writing. Thus, the perceived increase in the use of various writing strategies is indicative of the potential effectiveness of a short EAP pre-sessional course.

Revision constitutes an important component of the writing process that integrates text interpretation, reflection, and production. Although previous studies have offered useful insights into the revision behaviour of L2 writers at different levels of proficiency using off-line measures, little is known about the online processes of revision. In this study, I used keystroke logging to investigate longitudinal changes in the revision processes of postgraduate and undergraduate students in the context of an intensive English for Academic Purposes (EAP) program. Twenty-five postgraduate and 14 undergraduate students participated in this study. The keystroke logging program Inputlog was used during two essay writing sessions at the beginning and at the end of the course to observe how the participants revise their essays and to get insights into their on-line writing processes. Keystroke logging data were coded in terms of the orientation and location of revisions. The results revealed that postgraduates produced more content-oriented revisions at the end of the programme than at the beginning. The opposite trend was observed for the undergraduates, who revised their essays significantly less frequently at the end than at the beginning of the EAP program and made more mechanical revisions than postgraduate writers. The findings highlight fundamental differences in the developmental trajectories of revision processes between postgraduate and undergraduate students. These differences caused by previous academic writing experience and language proficiency should be considered in developing materials for EAP programs. In the paper, I also discuss benefits of using keystroke logging to investigate L2 writers' revision processes.

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