Premium
The effects of oral discussion and text chat on L2 Chinese writing
Author(s) -
Kessler Matt,
Polio Charlene,
Xu Cuiqin,
Hao Xuefei
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
foreign language annals
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.258
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1944-9720
pISSN - 0015-718X
DOI - 10.1111/flan.12491
Subject(s) - prewriting , second language writing , task (project management) , psychology , linguistics , argumentative , written language , character (mathematics) , collaborative writing , computer science , second language , mathematics education , teaching method , cooperative learning , philosophy , geometry , management , mathematics , economics
Numerous studies have investigated the effects of prewriting tasks on writing quality and language (e.g., individual vs. collaborative planning, text‐chat vs. face‐to‐face [FTF] discussion, etc.). Recent meta‐analyses have found a small advantage for text chat on writing, but no studies involved logographic languages, for which character learning may limit and tax language production. In this study we explore this issue, as university learners of Chinese ( N = 10) engaged in prewriting discussions orally and via text chat followed by a timed‐writing task. Results show that during FTF planning, students engaged in talk that was greater in terms of discussion length and number of turns; in students' writing, FTF planning resulted in increased lexical complexity and syntactic richness. Our results contradict theoretical perspectives suggesting that text chat might be more advantageous, as well as one empirical study by Liao. Finally, we discuss the implications for learning to write in a non‐alphabetic language.