The Effects Of Second Language Writing And Language Analytic Ability On Chinese Learners’ Acquisition Of English Attributive Clauses

Owing to the influence from linguistic theories and first language acquisition studies,scholarship in second language acquisition(SLA)has evolved in ways that implicitly privilege oral interaction over learning through written modalities,hence marginalization of writing in the field of SLA.In recent years,however,the role of writing in foreign language learning has gradually been recognized with the emergence of a body of researches on the language learning potential(LLP)of L2 writing.These enquiries,either by taking a cognitive perspective,tried to expound the underlying reasons for the LLP of written output,or by analyzing the nature and traits of writing,to show its advantages over oral output in promoting language development.Although advances have been made in this vein,empirical studies on “writing to learn language” are still rather scant.Besides,rather than exploring its effect on the acquisition of a particular linguistic feature with the SLA paradigm,the few existing studies,as conducted mainly by those from the L2 writing community,examined almost exclusively the effects of writing on the accuracy and/or complexity of learners’ written performance without taking learner factors into account.In view of these,the present study attempts to investigate the effects of L2 writing and language analytic ability(LAA)on Chinese learners’ acquisition of English attributive clauses and,by comparing different tasks,i.e.reading,reading+writing and writing,and using LAA as a moderating variable,to answer the following three questions: 1)Does writing have a positive effect on Chinese learners’ acquisition of English attributive clauses? 2)Does writing have an advantage over reading in facilitating the acquisition of English attributive clauses? 3)Does LAA moderate the effect of writing on acquisition of English attributive clauses? If the answer is yes,to what extent does it do so?The quasi-experiment lasted 12 weeks with a “pretest-treatment-immediate posttest-delayed posttest” design.In the first week,explanation was offered on “how the complexity of written English can be improved” in order to elicit the target structure in the subsequent tests.In the second week,the LAA tests and pretests were administered,through which the subjects were selected and divided into a Reading group(n=11,6 with low LAA and 5 with high LAA),a Reading+Writing group(n=13,7 with low LAA and 6 with high LAA),and a Writing group(N=12,6 with low LAA and 6 with high LAA).From the third to the eighth week,treatments were made once a week(i.e.tasks of reading,reading plus writing,and writing were assigned to the three groups accordingly).In the course,all subjects were asked to write a journal in Chinese once a week.The immediate posttest and the delayed posttest were administered in the ninth and the twelfth week respectively.The quantitative data were analyzed by means of One-way ANOVA,Post hoc tests and repeated measures ANOVA.The results showed that: 1)the performance of the Writing Group improved greatly in the immediate and the delayed posttest,and that of the Reading+Writing Group even more greatly,indicating that writing can facilitate Chinese learners’ acquisition of attributive clauses and the combination of reading and writing may produce better effects than writing alone;2)the Writing Group and the Reading+Writing Group did much better than the Reading Group in both of the posttests,suggesting that writing has advantages over reading in promoting L2 development,what’s more,both the Writing Group and the Reading+Writing Group did slightly better in the delayed posttest than in the immediate posttest,implying that the effect of writing on L2 acquisition may be well retained;and 3)no significant interaction effect was found between writing and LAA though the subjects of high LAA achieved a bit better results than those of low LAA in the three tests.By revealing the LLP of L2 writing through a comparison of the effects of different tasks on Chinese learners’ acquisition of English attributive clauses,the current study may shed some light on foreign language teaching in the non-target language context.Teachers can bring the LLP of writing into full play by providing students with proper reading materials and engaging them in authentic written communication.