Advanced FL learners explaining their writing choices: epistemic attitude as an indicator of problem-solving and strategic knowledge in the on-line revision process

ABSTRACT

Verbal protocols are usually used to study cognitive processes involved in various activities, as it is argued that they could make implicit processes of thinking visible and thus reportable. Here, it is proposed that verbalisations can also be approached from another angle, namely as a discourse that contains linguistic markers of writers’ revision activity. This small-scale study explores advanced foreign language (FL) writers’ choices during an on-line revision activity in a test environment. The starting point is the writers’ focus on certain phases in this activity that are signalled by the Finnish cognitive verbs meaning to think, combined with the linguistic marking of epistemic attitude during the revision processes. In these revision contexts, the writers explained how they solved problems related to their previously written texts. They revised problematic linguistic forms and functions both at the micro and macro levels on the basis of their strategic knowledge. The analysis showed that two types of revision activity were signalled by the epistemic attitude: change and pause in the process. Furthermore, contrary to a previous research study, the writers often appeared to focus on meaning-based problems related to lexical choices, which, however, were accompanied by hesitation and doubt regarding the correct choice. Moreover, the advanced writers showed strategic knowledge during the revision process, as they used several strategies that were occasionally accompanied by implicit reasoning for decision-making.

KEYWORDS:

• epistemic attitude
• on-line revision process
• problem-solving
• strategic knowledge

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the participants for making this study possible. We also appreciate the comments of the editors and the two anonymous Language Learning Journal reviewers.

Notes

1 For a complete discussion of definition of implicit knowledge, see Roehr (2006, 2008). Here the concept refers to the context of our study – to knowledge that is not explicitly mentioned or reasoning for a revision choice that is not explicitly mentioned.

2 The examples always begin with a capital letter. In the examples, italics are used to emphasise the analysed part of the text and italics with bold to emphasise the linguistic object a writer discusses in the text written in French. Furthermore, [word]/[ … ] indicates that something is added to or removed from the text to complete the meaning of the sentence.

Additional information

Funding

This research was partly supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation.