Effects of Task Complexity on L2 Writing Behaviors and Linguistic Complexity

Révész, Andrea; Kourtali, Nektaria‐Efstathia; Mazgutova, Diana

doi:10.1111/lang.12205

Cited by 147 publications

(122 citation statements)

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“…The participants were 24 L1 speakers of Turkish, who composed two argumentative essays, one in Turkish and one in L2 English. The keystroke logs yielded longer pauses between larger textual units, similar to the overall trend observed in Révész, Kourtali et al (2017). One exception to this pattern was the similar pause lengths found preceding words and nonfinite clauses in L2 writing, a finding also consistent with Révész, Kourtali et al's (2017) results (although this study did not code for different clause types).…”

Section: Pausing Behaviors and Underlying Cognitive Processessupporting

confidence: 86%

“…The same pattern was observed for the two task types and for the two groups of writers (L1 vs. L2), although the L2 writers, as expected, generally paused longer at each textual location. Spelman Miller's findings have been confirmed in a number of more recent studies employing keystroke logging (Chukharev-Hudilainen et al, 2019;Révész, Kourtali et al, 2017;Révész, Michel et al, 2017;Van Waes & Leijten, 2015). Among these, Van Waes and Leijten's work is of particular significance because the researchers used four different pause thresholds (200, 500, 1000, 2000ms) when studying L2 fluency behaviors.…”

Section: Pausing Behaviors and Underlying Cognitive Processesmentioning

confidence: 83%

“…Although there is a growing number of studies utilizing a combination of methods to tap the writing process (e.g., Gánem-Gutiérrez & Gilmore, 2018;Khuder & Harwood, 2015;Révész, Kourtali et al, 2017;Stevenson et al, 2006), only few such L2 studies (Chukharev-Hudilainen et al, 2019;Révész, Kourtali et al, 2017) have looked into pausing behaviors according to textual location. Révész, Kourtali et al (2017) studied the writing behaviors of 73 advanced L2 writers carrying out tasks of differential cognitive complexity. In addition to recording the participants' online writing behaviors by keystroke logging software, the researchers invited eight participants to describe their thought processes using stimulated recall, elicited by the playback of their keystroke recordings.…”

Section: Pausing Behaviors and Underlying Cognitive Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Exploring Second Language Writers’ Pausing and Revision Behaviors

Révész

Michel

Lee

2019

Stud Second Lang Acquis

Self Cite

139

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This study investigated the cognitive processes underlying pauses at different textual locations (e.g., within/between words) and various levels of revision (e.g., below word/clause). We used stimulated recall, keystroke logging, and eye-tracking methodology in combination to examine pausing and revision behaviors. Thirty advanced Chinese L2 users of English performed a version of the IELTS Academic Writing Task 2. During the writing task, participants’ key strokes were logged, and their eye movements were recorded. Immediately after the writing task, 12 participants also took part in a stimulated recall interview. The results revealed that, when participants paused at larger textual units, they were more likely to look back in the text and engage in higher-order writing processes. In contrast, during pauses at lower textual units, they tended to view areas closer to the inscription point and engage in lower-order writing processes. Prior to making a revision, participants most frequently had viewed the text that they subsequently revised or their eye gazes had been off-screen. Revisions focused more on language- than content-related issues, but there was a smaller difference in the number of language- and content-focused stimulated recall comments when larger textual units were revised.

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Section: Pausing Behaviors and Underlying Cognitive Processessupporting

confidence: 86%

Section: Pausing Behaviors and Underlying Cognitive Processesmentioning

confidence: 83%

Section: Pausing Behaviors and Underlying Cognitive Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Exploring Second Language Writers’ Pausing and Revision Behaviors

Révész

Michel

Lee

2019

Stud Second Lang Acquis

Self Cite

139

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Students' essays were scored in two different ways: quantitatively and qualitatively. As for writing quantity, students' total words written (TWW) was used; i.e., the total number of legible words in each essay was counted, including incorrectly spelled words (Kormos, 2011;Révész, Kourtali, & Mazgutova, 2017). McMaster and Campbell (2007) proved that TWW has adequate reliability as they found reliability to range between 0.60 and 0.76.…”

Section: Scoringmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cloud-Based Collaborative Writing to Develop EFL Students’ Writing Quantity and Quality

Ahmad¹

2020

IES

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This study has devoted itself to examining the effect of using cloud-based collaborative writing on EFL students' writing quantity and quality. Twenty-one EFL students studying at Jubail College of Education, IAU University participated in the study. They were pretested in writing quantity and quality before the treatment then they practiced cloud-based collaborative writing for a whole semester before being posttested in both measures. Results from non-parametric Wilcoxon Signed Ranks revealed no significant difference between the pretest and the posttest regarding writing quantity whereas it revealed a significant difference with regard to writing quality. It was concluded that cloud-based collaborative writing can be used to improve the quality of essays written by EFL students. Recommendations and research suggestions were introduced.Through the researcher's experience as an associate professor of TEFL at Jubail College of Education, IAU University, she noticed that writing is indeed a problematic area for most EFL students and that most students get low grades in their writing exams. Furthermore, she administered a writing test to a group of these students. Through analyzing their answers, the researcher found that they wrote insufficiently and she discovered that they committed many errors in coherence, grammar, spelling, structure, word choice, punctuation, phoneme clusters, and use of prefixes and suffixes. Therefore, the need arose to search for a solution for Saudi EFL students' inability to write effectively regarding both quantity and quality. Based on the researcher's search for effective strategies that can improve EFL writing quantity and quality, cloud-based collaborative writing seemed as a promising one.

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“…Students had difficulty organizing the time allowed for completing practices being the main issue the lack of time and for complying with the format in the 2 nd practice, 1000 words (Chen, 2015;Révész, Kourtali, & Mazgutova, 2016). Consequent to these constraints, students tended to associate difficulty with the practice's formal aspects, rather than with the difficulty inherent to its content (Ma, 2013).…”

Section: Analysis and Interpretation Of Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

First Steps toward Becoming a Teacher: The Experience with the Degree in Primary Education in English

Álvarez¹,

Olmos²

2017

ELR

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During an academic year took place the experience of observing learning strategies through the development of discursive skills for academic writing with two core subjects in the Degree in Primary Education in English (DPEE). A total of N=219 students' rubrics were analyzed. The methodology was based on two instances: The text-based and documentary data analysis resulted from two factors: (a) implementation of academic writing tasks that regulated the level of student guidance: semi-guided and autonomous in textual, discursive genres: argumentation, critical reflection, and (b) a rubric for students' self-assessment. Results showed that the sample group lacked meta-cognition and had continuous deficiency in oral expression, consequently their progress fell somewhat short of expectations. However, the study resulted in facilitation of pupils' discursive oral production in the first and second years for transfer of knowledge to subsequent academic years and in potential changes to the rubric. Keywords The Context of ResearchThis study aimed (1) to improve students' discursive writing skills during their first and second years in the Degree in Primary Education in English (DPEE) at the Faculty of Educational Sciences of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (In accordance with the 2014 ARMIF call, deployment of the Guideway strategy); (2) to demonstrate how such improvement can enhance students' learning of subject matter. Achievement of these two aims depended on students' receiving sufficient guidance and support on two levels: a) First level-Discursive writing skills: For 3 months in 2014 (October-December), discursive writing skills were implemented through two tasks, the first semi-guided, aiming to consolidate criteria that students were working toward acquiring. The second, an individual and autonomous task, aimed at assessing the extent to which students applied the previously consolidated criteria. This is how the pedagogical tool's application phase is identified. Recent studies, focused on the development of writing in university foreign language courses (Byrnes, 2012; Knoch et al., 2015; Puebla, 2015; Yasuda, 2011), have contributed the data considered by this study; in other words, these studies show that when students received guidance in their academic writing, they used the newly learned terminology in their composition tasks. Another question worth exploring is the extent to which students sustained this application and transfer over time.According to Castelló (2009), discursive writing skill involves considering the following points: a) knowing and regulating text composition activities and processes; b) incorporating reasoning processes involved in writing (defining the purpose, activating relevant information, selecting an appropriate genre and type of text); c) planning, researching, selecting, understanding, and synthesizing information from various sources; d) organizing and articulating ideas; e) reviewing and controlling the text being written and, f) considering students' emotion...

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Effects of Task Complexity on L2 Writing Behaviors and Linguistic Complexity

Cited by 147 publications

References 44 publications

Exploring Second Language Writers’ Pausing and Revision Behaviors

Exploring Second Language Writers’ Pausing and Revision Behaviors

Cloud-Based Collaborative Writing to Develop EFL Students’ Writing Quantity and Quality

First Steps toward Becoming a Teacher: The Experience with the Degree in Primary Education in English

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