A Corpus Study of Dyslexic University Students’ L2 Writing Processes

• Autores: Laurie Radar, Gaëtanelle Gilquin
• Localización: LIDIL: Revue de linguistique et de didactique des langues, ISSN 1146-6480, Nº 70, 2024 (Ejemplar dedicado a: L’écrit en langue seconde en contexte universitaire : l’apport des recherches basées sur les corpus d’apprenants)
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo
• Resumen

  • Second/foreign language (L2) writing is a critical skill for university students, and one that has attracted a great deal of attention in the literature on academic writing. Yet, one aspect that has received relatively less attention so far is the writing processes of language learners with dyslexia in this context. This study investigates the L2 writing processes of high-functioning dyslexic university students compared to their non-dyslexic counterparts, focusing on pausing and revision behaviours. The data come from a learner corpus representing the writing processes in addition to the written products. The participants are French-speaking learners of English who wrote two texts in English while keystroke logging technology captured their writing processes in real time. The analysis of the data reveals that dyslexic learners exhibit longer overall pausing time and more frequent pauses within words than the control group, indicating potential challenges with word-level processing in L2. They also exhibit longer overall revision time as well as longer mean revision duration than non‑dyslexic learners. Qualitative analysis reveals differences in editing approaches. While dyslexic learners engage in a non-linear editing process, non‑dyslexic learners follow a more linear process. These findings may be indicative of the heavy cognitive load that dyslexic students arguably experience when managing writing processes in L2 contexts.