A longitudinal study of the effects of model texts on EFL children's written production

Abstract

As written corrective feedback tools, it has been claimed that model texts improve language learners' subsequent production, but almost exclusively in terms of lexical gains. However, little research has been carried out with EFL children, an underrepresented population in the literature, and much less from a longitudinal perspective. The main aim of this study was to determine the extent to which sustained exposure to models can have an impact on the written production of child EFL learners. Thirty pairs of 11–12-year-old Spanish EFL children were randomly assigned to a control group, a treatment group, and a long-term treatment group, who engaged in two four-stage collaborative writing cycles of three weeks each. The children's collaborative texts were transcribed and analyzed considering different measures (types of clause, syntactic complexity, lexical diversity, accuracy, fluency, and holistic assessment). Our findings reveal that model texts led to a reduction in the number of pre-clauses and an increase in the syntactic complexity of the texts in the short run. Sustained exposure to models showed that the children were able to produce fewer proto-clauses and more clauses, feature higher lexical diversity in their texts, and make fewer errors.