Writing in a foreign language: Using the writing process to learn the target language

This study looked at writing to learn a target language in the secondary foreign language classroom. Students were in first and second year Spanish classes; they were rated as high or low ability. Two features of writing in a foreign language were assessed within and across student groups: fluency as seen in the number and variety of words and accuracy as seen in the number and percentage of grammatical errors. Words and errors were counted in a series of paragraphs to see if writing in the target language promoted further learning of that language. These counts were aligned with two steps in the writing process: fluency in the first draft and accuracy in the rewrite.;Two treatments were applied. The first treatment involved providing lexical support before writing the rough draft, to see if this increased fluency. The second treatment offered grammatical support in the form of an editorial checklist before the rewrite. Treatments were applied to either the first draft or the rewrite in a paragraph set. The number of words and errors were then counted. Changes were noted across treatments and across paragraph sets. Growth in the two areas of accuracy and fluency between the baseline and final paragraph was also counted.;While most results were not statistically significant, the changes did follow patterns of growth. Features of the writing process---first draft for fluency and rewrite for accuracy---were in themselves beneficial. However the treatments produced little or contradictory results. Teacher-led pre-writing input had diminishing effects across student groups. The post-writing editorial checklist gained in effectiveness once students were trained to correct mistakes. The first year students responded best to pre-writing input. The second year students made the most use of post-writing treatment. The low groups responded to treatment, but not always enough to make up the difference with the high groups.;It appears that a writing process approach is beneficial for integrating vocabulary and grammar in foreign language instruction, but supporting the writing with more communicative activities within the process and grammatical activities outside the process might better enhance language learning.