An Empirical Study Of The Effects Of Written Languaging On Chinese Efl Learners’ Acquisition Of English Past Hypothetical Conditional

Informed by Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory(SCT),Swain(2006)advances the term“languaging”.Languaging is regarded as the process of reflecting and explaining language use through language in virtue of Vygotsky’s notion of mediation.There is an increasing body of SLA research on languaging by foreign and domestic scholars in recent years.Whereas written languaging(WL)has been underexplored compared with oral languaging(OL).Adopting a 2×2 factor design,specifically,L2 proficiency levels and written languaging,the present study aimed at exploring the effects of WL on Chinese EFL learners’ acquisition of English past hypothetical conditional through a pretest-treatment-posttest-delayed posttest procedure.The study involved 47 English major juniors and 44 non-English major Freshmen.They were assigned to four groups according to whether engaging in WL and their L2 proficiency levels respectively.The treatment task employed in the study was individual written dictogloss.The participants of the two experimental groups analyzed and corrected their reconstructions in comparison with the original text engaging in WL.The participants of the two control groups compared their reconstructions with the original text without engaging in WL.The present study proposes the following three questions:(1)Does the use of written languaging facilitate Chinese EFL learners’ acquisition of English past hypothetical conditional? If yes,(a)to what extent does written languaging facilitate the acquisition of past hypothetical conditional?(b)how do written languaging episodes(WLEs)affect the acquisition of past hypothetical conditional?(2)What role does L2 proficiency play in the effects of written languaging on the acquisition of past hypothetical conditional?(3)What is Chinese EFL learners’ perception of written languaging?The major findings are summarized as follows: Firstly,engaging in WL facilitated Chinese EFL learners’ acquisition of past hypothetical conditional.To be specific,(a)the higher-level L2 learners benefited from WL in the long term.The lower-level L2 learners benefited from WL in both the short and long term.(b)the quality of target construction-related WLEs(T-WLEs)produced by the higher-level L2 learners was significantly associated with the acquisition of past hypothetical conditional,which indicated a beneficial impact of the quality of WL on the acquisition of past hypothetical conditional.Secondly,learners’ L2 proficiency had an effect on the quality of T-WLEs instead of the quantity of T-WLEs,that is,the higher L2 proficiency level the learners had,the higher quality of T-WLEs they produced,thus contributing to the acquisition of past hypothetical conditional.Thirdly,the majority of L2 learners held a positive attitude towards the use of WL.They felt WL helped them to notice their linguistic issues and to reflect and think deeply.The present study suggests that written languaging has a positive effect on the acquisition of the L2 grammatical item,which further substantiates the promotion effect of WL in previous studies.The facilitative effect of WL is in line with the cognitive development of the Sociocultural Theory.Moreover,the research findings lend support to the noticing and reflective functions of Swain’s(2005)Output Hypothesis and Schmidt’s(1990)Noticing Hypothesis.The present study also highlights several implications for second language pedagogy.For L2 learners,written languaging enables them to externalize internal psychological activity and to mediate internalization.Furthermore,WL offers an opportunity for instructors to reflect on their teaching and to adjust their teaching methods that are level-appropriate to L2 learners.