Insights into Language Production: Writing Phases and Bilingualism Advantages

M.A. Semester III, Paper I Psychology Cognitive Processes-II Prof. Sushma Pandey Dept. of Psychology DDU Gorakhpur University Gorakhpur

LECTURE OUTLINE- UNIT-2 Language Production: Writing Phases in writing Bilingualism Advantages of Bilingualism Disadvantages of Bilingualism

Language Language productio productio: Writing : Writing Lesser researches have been conducted on writing as compared to speaking. First article was published on writing in 1970 s. Writing is also an important component of many people s occupations. For example technical and professional people report that in a typical working day they spend an average about 30% of their time writing (Miller 1982, Kellogg 1989). Comparison between speaking and writing-: Writing mostly occur in loneliness as compared to speaking. The feedback about the writing is more delayed as compared to speaking.

Continued Continued In writing sufficient editing and revision process are involved as compared to speaking. Writing is more likely to be performed in isolation, with more complex syntax and more extensive revisions. When you speak, you are more likely to refer to yourself. While speaking, you are also more interactive with your audience , and you have a better opportunity to establish common ground with this audience. --(Chafe & Danielewicz,1987) In the process of writing, permanently record can be done while in the process of speaking it is not possible. --(Ellis & Beattie, 1986)

Continued Continued Chafe and Danielewicz (1987)- They selected some professors and graduate student in their study. And collected their formal and informal speeches in the form of writing. Results revealed that greater differences were found in written language whereas these type of differences were not found in spoken language. In spoken language more uniformity was found as compared to written language.

Phases in writing Phases in writing Writing consist of three phases ; planning, Sentence generating, and Revising. However like the similar stages we have earlier discussed in both understanding and producing spoken language. These tasks often overlap. ---(Hayes, 1989, Kellogg 1994) You may be planning your overall writing strategy while generating parts of several sentences. All components of the tasks are complex, and they strain the limit of attention. --(Kellogg, 1994) Writer becomes full blow thinker at the time of writing. Therefore, it requires more cognitive load. --(Hayes, 1980)

continued continued 1. Planning- The first stage in planning to write is to generate ideas. Idea generation is effortful and strategic much different from many relatively automatic language tasks. --(Collins, 1998; Torrance et al, 1996) Researches have shown that the amount of planning and the quality of planning are both highly correlated with the quality of the final written text. --(Hayes, 1989) Perhaps you had a high school teacher who insisted that you outline a paper before you begin to write. Research strongly support this strategy. --(Kellogg, 1988, 1994, 1998).

continued continued College students who were instructed to prepare a writing outline later wrote significantly better essays than students in a control group. Kellogg (1994, 1998) suggest that an outline may help to avoid overloaded attention. In addition, an outline may help students resolve the linearization problem, which occurs in writing as well as speaking. You ve probably had the experience of beginning to write a paper, only to find that each of several interrelated ideas need to be placed first. An outline can help you sort these ideas into an orderly, linear sequence.

Continued Continued 2. Sentence Generation- During sentence generation, the writer must translate the general ideas developed during planning, thus creating the actual sentences of the text. People often talk to themselves as they generate these sentences. A procedure that requires the phonological loop component of working memory. The most detailed outline must be greatly expanded during the generation phase of writing. Some researchers have began to explore the influence of computer use on the writing process. Students overall writing equality and writing fluency are about the same, whether they write with a computer or with a pen and paper (Kellogg 1994, 1996).

Continued Continued Students who use a computer may be more likely to rearrange blocks of text. --(Hayes 1996) 3. Revision- The revision phase should emphasize the importance of organization and coherence so that the parts of your paper are interrelated. (Britton, 1996) In order to revise what you have written, you need to reconsider your goals for the assignment. Does your paper accomplish these goals? The revision task should be time consuming. J.R. Hayes and his colleagues (1987) compared the revision strategies of seven expert writers and seven first year college students.

Continued Continued Everyone was given the same poorly written two page text and they were asked to revise it for an audience of young college students. The first year students typically approached the text one sentence at a time, fixing relatively minor problems with spelling and grammar, but ignoring problem of organization, focus and transition between the ideas. The students were also more likely to judge some defective sentences as being appropriate. Several students found no fault with the sentence. The students were less likely than the expert writers to diagnose the source of a problem in a sentence. For ex- a student might say, This sentence just doesn t sound right Whereas, an expert might say, The subject and the verb don t agree here .

bilingualism bilingualism A bilingual speaker is a person who uses two languages that differ in everyday life. --Francis (1999) We should use the term multilingual to refer to someone who uses more than two languages, but psycholinguistics often use the term bilingual to include multilingual as well. --Taylor & Taylor (1990) The bilingual s native language is referred to as the first language, and the non-native language is the second language. Some people live in bilingual region such as Quebec, Belgium, and Switzerland. Others become bilingual because their home language is not the language used for school and business.

continued continued Still others become bilingual because they have studied language in school, or because they grew up in homes where two languages were used routinely. English may be the most common language in both Canada and the U.S. but many other languages are also widely used. In Canada, for example- 60% people list English as their first language, but 24% list French. A substantial number of other Canadians list first language such as Italian, German, Chinese, Polish, and Portuguese (Colombo, 1997). A pioneer in research on bilingualism, Wallace Lambert, introduced an important distinction between additive and subtractive bilingualism.

Continued In additive bilingualism, an individual acquires proficiency in a second language with no loss in his or her first language; both languages are associated with respect and prestige. --(Bahrick et al, 1994) In subtractive bilingualism, the new language replaces the first language. Subtractive bilingualism often predominates for immigrant children. --(Gracia et al, 1998)

Advantages of bilingualism Advantages of bilingualism Bilinguals actually acquire more expertise in their native (first) language. For ex- English speaking Canadian children whose classes are taught in French gain greater understanding of English language structure (Diaz, 1985; Lambert et al, 1991). Bilinguals are more aware of the phonological components of language. --(Gracia et al, 1998) Bilinguals excel at paying selective attention to relatively subtle aspects of a language task, ignoring more obvious linguistic characteristics. The bilingual children were more likely than the monolingual children to recognize that the sentence was grammatically correct.

continued continued Bilingual children are more sensitive to some pragmatics aspects of language. Bilingual children are better at following complicated instructions. --(Hamers & Blanc, 1989) Bilingual children perform better than monolinguals on test of creativity, such as thinking of a wide variety of different uses for a paper clip. Bilinguals perform better on concept formation tasks and on test of non- verbal intelligence that requires reorganization of visual patterns. --(Peal & Lambert, 1962) Bilinguals also score higher on problem solving tasks that require them to ignore irrelevant information. --(Bialystok & Majumder, 1998)

Disadvantages of bilingualism Disadvantages of bilingualism People who use two languages extensively may subtly alter how they pronounce some speech sounds in both languages. Bilinguals are also slightly slower in making some kinds of decisions about language, though these are unlikely to inhibit communication (Taylor & Taylor, 1990). Bilinguals may also take somewhat longer to decide whether a string of letters (either a nonsense word or an English word) is actually an English word. Bilinguals may experience a slight disadvantage in language processing speed, in comparison to monolinguals but this disadvantage is for outweighed by the advantages of being able to communicate effectively in two languages.

Books recommended Books recommended 1. Galoti, K.M. (1999). Cognitive Psychology; in and outside laboratory, Mumbai: ThomsonAsia. 2. Matlin M.W. (1995). Cognition (III ed.) Prism Books Pvt. Ltd., Bsasvasigudi, Bengaluru. 3. Reed, Stephen K. (1988). Cognition theory and Application (III ed.) Pacific Grove, California: Books/Cole Publishing Company. Bull Temple Road,