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Different positions originating within the second language (L2) writing and second language acquisition (SLA) fields have recently claimed that writing can provide learners with special opportunities to restructure, extend, and refine their L2 knowledge (Harklau, 2002; Ortega, 2011; Williams, 2012). Earlier, Cumming (1990) had posited that the natural disjuncture between the written product and the mental processes required for its generation and revision might help learners to focus on form-meaning relationships. The availability of time in the writing mode and the permanence of written texts have also been considered to facilitate leaners’ use of explicit knowledge, attention to form as well as meaning, cognitive comparisons, and noticing the gap between their interlanguage and the L2 (Manchón & Williams, 2016).
These predictions have received empirical support in research on collaborative writing. Thus, it has been found that in collaborative writing conditions L2 users tend to pool their resources, reflect on and deliberate over alternatives, and give each other immediate feedback. As a result of these operations, learners may deepen their awareness of the relationship between meaning, form, and function and stretch their current linguistic resources toward their potential developmental level (Storch, 2013, 2016, for recent reviews of this body of work).
However, the controlled nature of the tasks used in research on collaborative writing and the oral character of peer interaction during collaboration may result in forms of linguistic and strategic processing that may not be directly extrapolated to the individual writing of complex texts (Manchón, 2011). Yet, individual writing may provide distinct favorable conditions for activating writers’ own problem-solving processes, which are deemed to lead to L2 learning (Cumming, 1990). Surprisingly, the language learning potential of language reflection in individual writing has remained practically unexplored, with the notable exceptions of the pioneering attempts by Cumming (1990) and Swain and Lapkin (1995). With the present study we intend to start filling this gap through the provision of a theoretically motivated and empirically based coding system that attempts to capture in a comprehensive way the language processing activity learners engage in when solving the linguistic problems they face during individual writing tasks. A valid coding system is considered a necessary preliminary step for future explorations of the language learning opportunities afforded by individual writing tasks.
Although the...