| The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of three sub-processes of pre-task planning (Kellogg, 1996) on second language (L2) writers' texts. One thousand eighty-four lower-advanced learners of English as a foreign language, all native speakers of Spanish, wrote two essays in response to two counterbalanced essay prompts. The first essay constituted baseline data for the second experimental essay, which was composed one week later. Prior to composing the experimental essay, the participants completed one of five pre-task activities designed to focus their attention on various sub-processes of pre-task planning. The essays of 919 participants were then analyzed for holistic writing quality, writing fluency, lexical sophistication, and grammatical complexity.;The results of comparisons among the pre-task planning conditions indicated limited impact of pre-task planning on the participants' texts. Organization and idea generation pre-task planning were found to have a minimal impact on grammatical complexity. Organization pre-task planning was also found to impact writing fluency. However, contrary to studies on pre-task planning among first language (L1) writers, no impact of pre-task planning was noted on holistic writing quality. Likewise, pre-task planning was found to have no impact on measures of lexical sophistication.;The results of this study suggest that pre-task planning activities, in and of themselves, have limited impact on L2 writers' texts. This finding is discussed in light of previous studies among L1 writers which found planning to be associated with higher holistic quality ratings. It is suggested that the findings of research among L1 writers may have been moderated by the participants' prior experience with and exposure to pre-task planning techniques, academic writing tasks, as well as academic reading tasks. It is further suggested that, in L2 writing instruction, explicit instruction and extensive practice in the use of such techniques may result in improved L2 writing quality. |
