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The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics
[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 21, No. 0, pp.656-677
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 31 Jan 2021
Received 25 Jun 2021 Revised 16 Jul 2021 Accepted 25 Jul 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.21..202107.656

Korean Learners’ English Article Revisions and General Attention Areas in an L2 Writing Task: Use of a Picture-Based Narrative Model Text

Sujung Park
Professor, Hanyang Cyber Univ. supark@hycu.ac.kr


© 2021 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Previous research has investigated models as feedback to examine what learners notice and revise when comparing their initial texts against models, reporting that their attention largely lies in the order of lexis, content, and grammar. However, these researchers used learners’ self-reports as the measure for assessing learners’ noticing and its subsequent effects on revisions. Thus, this study looked at their actual text revisions for what they notice and revise from a model, with their written reports as the secondary data. Employing a picture-based narrative task with sixteen Korean adult learners, this study investigated the use of English articles to examine in what circumstances the learners correctly revise articles, leave them uncorrected, or incorrectly revise them as well as what general aspects of language, other than articles, they notice and revise in their initial texts. Results indicated that article-related factors included proficiency, prior article knowledge, language awareness, selective attention, input processing priorities, limited attentional capacity, language learning strategies, first language (L1) interference, and location mismatches between learner phrases and model phrases. As for their attention to other general aspects of language, they noticed and revised lexis, content, and grammar sequentially, while organization, a newly added aspect, produced mixed results depending on what aspects of organization were assessed. This paper concludes with future research directions with an aim of diversifying attention to different aspects of language.

Keywords:

L2 model text, feedback, revisions, noticing, picture-based narrative writing, English articles, Korean EFL adult learners

Acknowledgments

This study used a subset of the data used in Park’s study (2017) to analyze, using a different methodology, the underlying interactions among the learners’ initial texts, a model text, and the revised texts. I appreciate an anonymous reviewer from the earlier study who suggested this further approach for a fuller picture of the use of a model text by L2 learners.

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