The Relationship Between Thinking In L1 And L2 Writing: A Study Of The Process Of English Writing By Senior Middle School Students

It is found that the L2 writing is not a pure L2 thinking process in some researches lately. Writing in L2, especially at the primary stage of L2 learning, cannot avoid L1 thinking. The learners of low L2 proficiency may rely on their L1 in L2 writing process.The issues about L1 influence are discussed for nearly half a century in second language acquisition field but never have the last word. From the 1980s, researchers paid increasing attention to the research of L2 writing. But most of the studies compared the similarity between L1 writing and L2 writing and emphasized the commonness. There're few studies focused on the effect of L1 on L2 writing. The conclusions differ from each other.In the past decade, many researchers (Guo & Liu, 1997; Wen & Guo, 1998; Wang, 2004; and Li, 2006) in China carried out empirical studies on L1 using in the L2 outputting process. These studies are significant for the L1 using in SLA.L1 thinking is special in L2 writing. This thesis carries out an empirical study on senior middle school students'writing process and discusses the relationship between L1 thinking and L2 writing. The research may enrich the comprehension of the L1 effect, enhance the understanding of the characteristic of L2 writing and help to construct L2 writing theory.There're five chapters of the text. The first chapter introduces the related background, significance and layout of the research. The second chapter is literature review. The third chapter and the fourth chapter which deal with the research are the hard-core of the text. There're research questions, subjects, instruments and data collection procedures in the chapter three. The fourth chapter contains data analyses, research results and discussion. The fifth chapter includes major finding and implications. The 12 subjects of this study come from Guangfeng Shiyan School. The research instruments include think-aloud, observation and interview. The think-aloud protocols are analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. First, L1 and L2 words in each protocol are counted and the proportion of L1 use is computed to measure the amount of L1 in L2 writing. Then, the writer's cognitive operations were categorized into five composing activities and the proportion of L1 use in each activity was calculated to show when the writer tends to rely on L1. The interview reports were used to explore the reasons of using L1 in L2 writing process and the writers'ideas about L1 thinking.The major findings of this study are summarized as follows:(1) The L2 writing process is a bilingual event: L2 writers have two languages (i.e., L1 and L2) at their disposal when they are composing in L2.(2) The amount of L1 use in L2 writing may vary with the writers'L2 proficiency.(3) The reasons of L1 using in individual L2 writing activities are various.