The Effects Of Translanguaging In Prewriting Discussion On The Production Of Chinese Intermediate EFL Learners’ Argumentative Writing

In recent years,the new paradigm of applied linguistics,namely,translanguaging,has been widely used in the study of second or foreign language teaching.This thesis aims at exploring the effects of translanguaging in prewriting discussions(thereafter,PWDs)on the production of English argumentative writing,with Chinese intermediate EFL learners as the research objects.In order to achieve this goal,the following two issues are supposed to be discussed:(1)What are the differences between PWD activities by using English,Chinese and translanguaging?(2)What are the effects of translanguaging in PWD on the production of English argumentative writing?36 students of non-English majors,Grade 1,Yunnan Normal University,were selected as the research subjects.They were randomly divided into 9 groups with 4people in each group.Each group will have a 10-minute discussion on the given writing topic by using English,Chinese and translanguaging.The discussion will be recorded throughout the whole process.And then,subjects were asked to complete the writing task independently in the following 20 minutes.Afterwards,based on the audio-recordings,the participants were required to mark on the essays what had been discussed in the PWD.Finally,some of them were selected to conduct an attitude interview about translanguaging employed in their PWD.This research uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis to solve the two questions mentioned above.Dealing with the first question,both the average percentage and average number of speech units in all discussion activities will be calculated.The results show that in PWD,the students in the same-language-use all achieve the highest average percentage of speech units in idea-generating.In addition,compared with students who are only allowed to use English or Chinese in PWD,students who use translanguaging produce the largest number of speech units both in total and in idea-generating.To cope with the second question,students’ content scores,the number of content words in sections related to the PWD and the percentage of content words in sections related to the PWD to content words in the whole text,as well as students’ attitude towards translanguaging employed in their PWD will be analyzed.The results show that students who use translanguaging in PWD can get the highest content scores,produce the most PWD-related content words and the largest percentage of content words in sections related to the PWD to content words in the whole text,and they are more willing to continue to use translanguaging in future FL writing courses.In addition,in order to further investigate how translanguaging plays a role in students’ content discussions,the conversation analysis of PWDs conducted in English-only and translanguaging will be carried out.The results show that students who use translanguaging can fix communication breakdowns in a timely and smooth manner in conversation discussions,which have a certain positive effect on content discussion and their later writing.Based on the research results presented above,this study has certain enlightenment for FL writing teaching: Firstly,teachers should incorporate PWD approach into their own writing teaching.Secondly,teachers should change their monolingual views and focus on students’ own language practices.And in the process of writing teaching,teachers should create a language education ecological environment where students can practice translanguaging,i.e.,making students use all their linguistic resources to achieve their goals and serve for learning.Finally,students can use their own strong language resources to develop weaker languages through the “translanguage” way.