Writing, Reading, and Reading‐to‐Write in a Foreign Language: A Critical Review

Abstract

ABSTRACT The development of reading and writing skills in a foreign language (FL) has a central role in the FL curriculum. The importance of these abilities is even stronger in upper‐level courses where reading and writing are assigned in combination, as in the case of reading‐to‐write tasks. In these tasks students are asked to read articles or literary selections and to react and respond to them in an insightful and critical manner (Horowitz 1986; Spack 1988; Flower el al. 1990; Kem and Schultz 1992). The complexity involved in these skills as well as the web of processes that readers/writers orchestrate have been unveiled by researchers in both first (L1) and second/foreign languages (L2/FL) who seek an understanding of the cognition of reading‐to‐write acts. In this article a review is presented of the most influential work done on the process of reading‐to‐write in the last two decades. Also, reference is made to the impact that research on writing process and reading process has made on the FL profession.