Writing as a social process: Development in scaffolded L2 writing

Writing is often misunderstood as “autonomous, asocial and decontextualized cognitive processes” (Pennycook, 2001, p. 76) but Pennycook reminds us that literacy is “a set of contextualized social practices” (p. 77) and that “schools should learn to accommodate different orientations toward texts” (ibid.). This action research addresses L2 writing from such individualized and contextualized approach using sociocultural theory as its analytic framework. According to Vygotsky (1981), scaffolding that reflects learner’s zone of proximal development (ZPD) is conducive to internalization and hence learning.

The research questions are as follows:
1) What aspects (e.g., vocabulary, syntax, spelling, etc.) of English academic composition writing do Japanese college students have difficulties with?
2) What aspects are particularly resistant to transformation/development?
3) What is the developmental pattern like?
4) Are there differences in (1) ~ (3) between returnee and non-returnees?

In this study, three Japanese female senior English majors, two non-returnee and one returnee, wrote their English undergraduate thesis in the course of a month. Their drafts were collected five (11 files in total), six (eight files) and 12 times (26 files), respectively, based on their requests. Upon receipt of a new draft, the researcher, instead of making straightforward corrections, highlighted parts that contained erroneous items in yellow and the students were to identify and correct them on their own. By examining the errors, it was noticed that the returnee tended to make grammatical errors such as subject-verb agreement that were difficult for the student to identify irrespective of repeated highlights. Non-returnees, on the other hand, over-utilized the preposition “of” and used awkward syntax that disrupted text flow. However, these were identified and corrected immediately. It is suggested that the returnee’s writing is influenced by her oral performance, giving rise to errors that are difficult to rectify; more interactions that scaffold her oral accuracy are needed.

Presented at the Second International Conference on Sociolinguistics: Insights from Superdiversity, Complexity and Multimodality (ICS2), Budapest, Hungary, September 6-8, 2018.