L1 and L2 Writers' Strategic and Linguistic Knowledge: A Model of Multiple‐Level Discourse Processing

Abstract

This study compared the cognitive processing of 12 anglophone second‐year French undergraduate students who were prompted to write an argumentative text in both L1 (English) and L2 (French). The students' speaking aloud protocols and textual drafts provided the basis of collected data. In the first part of the study, the writers' planning, evaluation, and revision strategies were (a) analyzed in terms of the pragmatic., textual, and linguistic manifestations of these processes and (b) compared for differences in processing behaviors between their L1 and L2 writing. In the second part, we measured linguistic processing occurrences to analyze their effect on more global processing behaviors at the pragmatic and textual levels. The linguistic constraints imposed by the writers' knowledge of the second language (French) point toward some significant differences in discourse level processing between L1 and L2 writing behaviors. However, the results reveal that the state of the writers' strategic knowledge and capacity for meaningful multiple‐level discourse processing explains the constraining effects of linguistic processing on L2 written discourse production.