No abstract

When written corrective feedback is provided via model texts, language learners notice and incorporate features from the models into their subsequent writings. However, little is known about the accuracy of these incorporations or about the impact of model texts on draft quality. Also, model texts have often been implemented with children working in pairs but, to date, studies including individual and collaborative conditions are extremely scarce. This study examines the impact of model texts among 33 EFL children (aged 11–12) divided into a pair (N = 22) and an individual (N = 11) group. Our findings do not reveal any significant differences between pairs and individuals. The students in both conditions noticed features, mainly lexical. They incorporated around 50% of these features from the model texts into their final drafts, with an accuracy rate of 60%. Regarding draft quality, the second draft was significantly better than the first one when rated holistically.

In this article we provide an explanation for 2 syntactic phenomena whose systematic production has been observed in the English nonnative grammar of 3 different age groups of 58 bilingual (Basque/Spanish) children after 4 years of exposure to English in a formal setting: Department of Modern Languages and Literatures. The research reported here is part of a larger longitudinal study on the English interlanguage of bilingual (Basque/Spanish) children. We wish to acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Education through research project PS95-0025 and from the University of the Basque Country through research project UPV 103.130-HA011/99. We also wish to thank the Department of Modern Languages, the Faculty of Arts, and the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies of the University of Ottawa. Thanks also go to Vicente Nú ñ ez Antón (Departmentof Econometrics and Statistics, Universityof the BasqueCountry) for his assistance with the statistical analysis and to Marco Llamazares for proofreadingthemanuscript.Wearegratefultotwoanonymousreviewersfortheir invaluable comments and suggestions. A preliminary version of this article was presented at

Second language (L2) writing research has demonstrated that young learners discuss linguistic issues, make use of feedback, and show a generally positive disposition toward writing tasks. However, many issues deserve further investigation. Regarding task implementation, few studies have been conducted with young learners writing individually, and few have compared different feedback types. Also, the focus of analysis has mostly been placed on students’ discussions; little is known about aspects such as draft quality and task motivation. To address these gaps, draft quality and task motivation were measured in 75 learners (aged 10–12 years) engaged in a three-stage writing task. They were divided into a task repetition group ( n = 21), a group that received feedback via direct corrections ( n = 30), and a group that received feedback via model texts ( n = 24). Students’ drafts improved very slightly in complexity with task repetition; they significantly improved in accuracy with direct corrections, and also in lexical diversity and text quality with models. Task motivation remained high throughout the writing cycle in the task repetition group, where students found the task easy. However, it dropped slightly with direct corrections and – especially before the final draft, with models – which students deemed conducive to learning but difficult. Some pedagogical guidelines are discussed.

Research into the potential of collaborative writing is relatively new. Similarly, task repetition (TR), which has been claimed to be a valuable tool for language learning, has been rarely explored in the context of writing. Therefore, little is known about the potential of combining TR and collaborative writing, and even less if we focus on young learners (YLs), who constitute a generally under-researched population. With these research gaps in mind, the present study examines the compositions of 10 pairs of learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) (aged 12) who write the same text in response to the same picture prompt three times over a three-week period. Our analysis includes the language-related episodes (LREs) that learners generate while writing collaboratively and, also, a thorough analysis of the three drafts that students produce, including quantitative (complexity, accuracy and fluency (CAF)) and holistic measures. Results show that learners’ compositions improve with repetition when measured by holistic ratings although CAF measures fail to grasp this improvement. As for the LREs, a great amount was found, most of the episodes were focused on form, most were successfully resolved and their amount declined with TR. In light of these results we argue in favor of the inclusion of holistic measures when analyzing students’ productions and discuss the positive effects of collaborative writing in the context of TR with YLs.