Written Language Production Research Articles

The fluency vs. disfluency dichotomy in writing processes as reflected in the structure of the inter-key intervals empirical distribution

ABSTRACT The broader aim of this study is the corpus-based investigation of the written language production process. To this end, temporal markers have been keylog recorded alongside the writing processes to exploit pauses to segment the speech product into linear units of performance. However, identifying these pauses requires selecting the relevant interkey intervals (IKI) between production microevents. Different models have been applied to identify such components in the empirical distribution of these delays, in particular Gaussian mixture models (GMM), yet no consensus has emerged regarding the number and interpretation of these components. Here, we analyze IKI distributions from a corpus of keylogs and show that a model with two components is robustly selected across a large range of participants. Furthermore, we show that the contents of these modes are consistent with a fluency vs. disfluency interpretation of the modes by identifying which kinds of events fall into each mode.

Accessing Lexicon Versus Time Pressure: Testing Non-native Speakers of English to Perform in English Language

Storing words in memory is an interesting topic for a great number of researchers working in the fields of linguistics, applied linguistics and psycholinguistics around the globe. It is worth mentioning that the words we know are stored in a very complex way in our memory this can be pictured as the World Wide Web. Researchers have always been curious about the way this store is accessed, which in psycholinguistics is known as mental lexicon. This paper aims to explore how this network-like-store is accessed when a person is under pressure. In this study, twenty-four participants are tested in two runs of the experiment, which is used to conduct the study. On the first attempt, participants are placed in a typical scenario where there is no time constraint or any pressure to produce a certain number of words within a given amount of time. Later, they will be asked to write again in a shorter period of time and then the time is further decreased to produce written words in the third run. The effects of time constraints on the capacity to use the mental lexicon during written language production will be examined in this study. At the conclusion of the paper, the improvement of accessing mental lexicon is shown when the time pressure is increased.

The Relationship Between Oral and Written Language in Narrative Production by Arabic-Speaking Children: Fundamental Skills and Influences.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between oral and written language skills in narrative production among Arabic-speaking children, focusing on cognitive and linguistic abilities. It examines the differences in narrative parameters between oral and written narratives and explores the associations between these parameters and cognitive and linguistic skills. The research involved 237 sixth-grade Arabic-speaking students from low-socioeconomic status schools in Israel. Each participant was instructed to orally tell a narrative and to write another narrative based on two sets of six sequential pictures. Various narrative features were analyzed, including word count for length, type-token ratio (TTR) for lexical diversity, mean length of utterance (MLU) for morphosyntax, and number of episodes for macrostructure. Cognitive linguistic measures, including Raven's Progressive Matrices, reading comprehension (RC), and morphological awareness (MA) were also assessed. The study found significant differences between oral and written narratives regarding lexical diversity and macrostructure. Participants exhibited significantly higher TTR in written narratives compared to oral narratives, whereas the number of episodes was significantly higher in oral narratives than in written ones. However, no significant differences were observed in narrative length or MLU. Moreover, the study identified significant predictors for various aspects of written narratives, particularly MA and RC, which significantly predicted TTR, MLU, and macrostructure. Additionally, the inclusion of word count in oral narratives significantly enhanced the explained variance for narrative length and macrostructure in written language. The results highlight the importance of the oral-written interface in both micro- and macrostructure representations in both oral and written modalities. They suggest that cognitive and linguistic skills, such as MA and RC, play a crucial role in narrative production. The findings have implications for educational practices and literacy outcomes in the Arab world, enhancing the understanding of the challenges and strategies involved in written language production among Arabic-speaking children.

In Scriptura Veritas? Exploring Measures for Identifying Increased Cognitive Load in Speaking and Writing

This study aims to establish a methodological framework for investigating deception in both spoken and written language production. A foundational premise is that the production of deceitful narratives induces a heightened cognitive load that has a discernable influence on linguistic processes during real-time language production. This study includes meticulous analysis of spoken and written data from two participants who told truthful and deceitful narratives. Spoken processes were captured through audio recordings and subsequently transcribed, while written processes were recorded using keystroke logging, resulting in final texts and corresponding linear representations of the writing activity. By grounding our study in a linguistic approach for understanding cognitive load indicators in language production, we demonstrate how linguistic processes, such as text length, pauses, fluency, revisions, repetitions, and reformulations can be used to capture instances of deception in both speaking and writing. Additionally, our findings underscore that markers of cognitive load are likely to be more discernible and more automatically measured in the written modality. This suggests that the collection and examination of writing processes have substantial potential for forensic applications. By highlighting the efficacy of analyzing both spoken and written modalities, this study provides a versatile methodological framework for studying deception during language production, which significantly enriches the existing forensic toolkit.

Taking Advantage of L2 Errors in EFL Learners’ Written Language Production

This qualitative study investigates the errors committed by Turkish EFL learners and the rate of spelling mistakes to grammar errors in learners’ paragraphs. In order to examine these issues, 19 participants studying at a private high school in Turkey took part in this study. The qualitative data were collected through students’ paragraphs written in English. A content and a descriptive analysis were employed to analyze the data. The grammar errors were categorized as errors of omission, addition, misformation, and double types throughout the scrutiny. The errors were related to various grammatical elements such as verbs, articles, verb inflections, noun inflections, and prepositions. The most frequent error category was omission, and the grammar elements the students errored most were prepositions. The results also showed that the students’ grammar errors were approximately two times more than their spelling mistakes. Given the results of this study, some suggestions for future studies and pedagogical implications were provided.

쓰기 능력 발달 척도 개발 및 타당화

Based on Bereiter’s (1980) theoretical model of the development of writing abilities, this study developed and validated a scale applicable to Korean high school and college students with 25 items (5 items per factor) in five factors divided into “associative, performative, communicative, unified, and epistemic writing.” In addition, the simplex assumption was checked to see if the five stages of the development of writing abilities identified by Bereiter were developmentally connected as per the original theoretical model.
 The main findings of the study are as follows: First, associative, performative, communicative, and unified writing were developmentally linked, while epistemic writing was not. Second, associative writing was either negatively correlated with other factors or its values were not statistically significant. Third, considering rhetorical context, including readers’ level, interest, response, and counterargument, was inversely related to fluency in written language production and idea generation.

USE OF COHESIVE DEVICES IN PARAGRAPH WRITING BY EFL STUDENTS AT ENGLISH LANGUAGE CENTERS IN VIETNAM

This research explores Vietnamese EFL students’ use of cohesive devices in paragraph writing. Eighty Vietnamese EFL learners in four pre-intermediate English classes at two English centers in Vietnam each wrote five paragraphs about five different topics via learning blogs, yielding a corpus of 400 paragraphs. Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) cohesion taxonomy was employed to identify and analyse the cohesive devices used. The results of the study show that the learners employed a wide range of cohesive markers in their paragraphs and the large majority of them were grammatical in nature; lexical cohesive means were used to a much smaller extent and mainly involved repetition. Of the grammatical cohesive types, use of reference and conjunction was common while substitution and ellipsis were infrequently used. The study provides important pedagogical implications for EFL writing instruction in regard to the employment of cohesive devices in written language production.

Syntactic encoding in written language production by deaf writers: A structural priming study and a comparison with hearing writers.

In three structural priming experiments, we investigated whether deaf and hearing writers differ in the processes and representations underlying written language production. Experiment 1 showed that deaf writers of Mandarin Chinese exhibited comparable extents of structural priming and comparable lexical boosts, suggesting that syntactic encoding in written language production is similarly sensitive to prior lexical-syntactic experience in deaf and hearing writers. Experiment 2 showed that, while hearing writers showed a boost in structural priming when the prime and the target had homographic or heterographic homophone dative verbs compared to unrelated ones, deaf writers showed a homophone boost only with homographic homophone verbs but not with heterographic homophone verbs. This finding suggests that while hearing people develop associated lemmas for homophones due to phonological identity, deaf people do so due to orthographic identity. Finally, Experiment 3 showed no boost in structural priming in deaf writers or hearing writers when the prime and the target had the same verb of the same orthography (i.e., in the same script) than of different orthographies (i.e., between Simplified and Traditional Chinese), suggesting that neither hearing nor deaf people use orthographic identity to reactivate the prime structure. In all, the findings suggest that syntactic encoding in writing employs the same syntactic and lexical representations in deaf and hearing writers, though lexical representations are shaped more by orthography than phonology in deaf writers. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Morphological and phonological errors in the written language production of children with DLD

ABSTRACT The present study aims to investigate the written language production in Greek of Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) children and compare it to that of typically developing (TD) children matched for gender and chronological age. The participants of the study were 31 children with DLD (7.6 years old) and 31 TD children (7.7 years old). All the participants were asked to write a text on a specific prompt they were given by the researchers. Both groups were assessed for the total number of words produced in text, the proportion of incorrectly spelt words in text, the total number of morphological errors and the total number of phonological errors produced. In addition, the specific type of morphological and phonological errors students produced in their written texts of the DLD group were also taken into consideration. The findings of the study showed that the DLD group performed worse in almost all measurements as compared to their TD peers and that their errors concerned mainly replacement, omission or addition of graphemes or syllables. Further research is needed on the written production of individuals with DLD in order to replicate those findings and contribute to the almost non-existing knowledge concerning written production in Greek.

Effects of Problem-Solving Activities on Korean Young Learners’ Critical Thinking and English Production

This study investigated the effects of complex problem-solving activities involving children’s literature on students’ critical thinking dispositions and English production. Thirty-one sixth-grade students were given lessons over a seven-week period. Various types of data were analyzed qualitatively, and the results of a critical thinking disposition test were analyzed quantitatively. Results were as follows: First, the critical thinking dispositions test revealed positive changes in open-mindedness, independence, objectivity, and inquisitiveness. The highest score was found for open-mindedness. The largest increase in score was for independence and objectivity. Second, changes in critical thinking dispositions enriched children’s English production. Open-mindedness helped with spoken language production as it encouraged students to share their opinions freely. Independence was mainly expressed in writing form in which students could question and evaluate the text. Greater objectivity was applied to spoken and written language production as the subjects were able to recognize the importance of evidence. Inquisitiveness affected children’s writing as it drove them to write down the results of their own research.

Dissociation of Writing Processes: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study on the Neural Substrates for the Handwritten Production of Chinese Characters.

Writing is an important way to communicate in everyday life because it can convey information over time and space, but its neural substrates remain poorly known. Although the neural basis of written language production has been investigated in alphabetic scripts, it has rarely been examined in nonalphabetic languages such as Chinese. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging study explored the neural substrates of handwritten word production in Chinese and identified the brain regions sensitive to the psycholinguistic factors of word frequency and syllable frequency. To capture this, we contrasted neural activation in "writing" with "speaking plus drawing" and "watching plus drawing." Word frequency (high, low) and syllable frequency (high, low) of the picture names were manipulated. Contrasts between the tasks showed that writing Chinese characters was mainly associated with brain activation in the left frontal and parietal cortex, whereas orthographic processing and the motor procedures necessary for handwritten production were also related to activation in the right frontal and parietal cortex as well as right putamen/thalamus. These results demonstrate that writing Chinese characters requires activation in bilateral cortical regions and the right putamen/thalamus. Our results also revealed no brain activation associated with the main effects of word frequency and syllable frequency as well as their interaction, which implies that word frequency and syllable frequency may not affect the writing of Chinese characters on a neural level.

THE USE OF THE HIGH FREQUENCY VERB MAKE IN OPINION ESSAYS BY VIETNAMESE EFL STUDENTS

Much research has been devoted to how learners use diverse and sophisticated or low frequency words in their English as a foreign language (EFL) written language production. However, the question of how EFL students use high frequency words, especially common verbs such as have, get, make, etc., in EFL writing has remained underexplored, despite the fact that they occur frequently and constitute a large proportion of words in written texts (Nation, 2013). The present study therefore examined how Vietnamese EFL students used the high frequency verb MAKE in their written opinion essays. The freeware AntConc (Anthony, 2020) was used to identify the different forms of the target MAKE and their frequency in 200 opinion essays written by Vietnamese EFL university students in three English writing classes as progress tests. Each concordance line in the AntConc output was subsequently examined to discover patterns of uses of MAKE according to Altenberg and Granger’s (2001) framework. The results show that causative and delexical uses of MAKE were most common and students still committed errors with MAKE. The findings have important pedagogical implications for feedback giving and writing instruction.

Cerebellar contributions to orthographic working memory: A single case cognitive neuropsychological investigation

Single case cognitive neuropsychological investigations involve the precise characterization of cognitive impairment at the level of an individual participant. This deep data precision affords a more fine-grained understanding of the cognitive and neural underpinnings of complex tasks, and continues to provide unique insights that inform theory in cognitive neuroscience. Here, we present a single case study of an individual, F.R., who suffered a stroke that led to chronic reading and writing problems that include an impairment to the orthographic working memory system proposed to be involved in both written language production and comprehension. Individuals who have been previously reported with a similar cognitive impairment commonly have left parietal lesions. However, F.R.’s orthographic working memory deficit resulted from damage to the right cerebellum, specifically to a region that is both structurally and functionally connected to the left parietal lobe and has been identified as part of the spelling network in previous meta-analyses of writing fMRI studies. From this lesion-symptom association, we argue that orthographic working memory is subserved by a cortical-cerebellar circuit, with damage at any point in the circuit resulting in an impairment to this function. Such a conclusion is warranted by observations from this single case approach, and we argue that these observations would likely have been missed if F.R. had been included in a larger, shallower group study. In addition to elucidating our understanding of the neural basis of spelling, this case study demonstrates the value that single case neuropsychology can continue to bring to cognitive neuroscience.

Written Language Production in Children With Developmental Language Disorder

This study contributes to the cross-linguistic investigation of written language difficulties in children with DLD by reporting new findings from Greek-speaking individuals. Specifically, we investigate the writing performance of children with DLD and compare it to that of a group of typically developing (TD) children, matched for gender and chronological age. The specific orthographic properties of Greek, radically different from those of English, offer a unique opportunity to understand the nature of written language production in DLD. The participants of the study were 62 children, 31 with DLD and 31 TD. Both groups were asked to write a text on a special prompt they were given by the researcher and they were assessed in the total number of words used in text, in the proportion of incorrectly spelt words in text as well as in the use of verbs, nouns, content and function words. Also, the different words and the total number of main and subordinate clauses each of the participants used in their text were counted. The findings of the study showed that the written outputs of the DLD group were poorer in almost all measurements compared to those of their TD peers. We discuss our findings in relation to those reported by other languages, in particular English, and spell out the implications for assessing written language in children with DLD.

Δεξιότητες παραγωγής γραπτού λόγου σε παιδιά με και χωρίς δυσλεξία: ομοιότητες και διαφορές

The difficulties in writing among children with dyslexia are equally severe as and certainly more persistent than those they face in reading. In the present study, we compared the performance of 22 elementary school children (3rd and 5th graders) with dyslexia and 22 typically developing children, matched on gender, age, and non-verbal intelligence, on a picture-elicited narrative task. Participants’ written samples were evaluated in terms of productivity, complexity at the sentence and text levels, punctuation and capitalization, spelling accuracy, and text organization (cohesion and coherence). Groups differed chiefly in terms of spelling accuracy and cohesion, as non-dyslexic participants performed better. Qualitative analyses of the narratives produced allowed us to compare further and gain insight into the children’s spelling and text organization abilities in each group. Coherence appeared to be the domain in which children with and without dyslexia demonstrate the greatest similarities. More specifically, all of them face difficulties in controlling the macrostructure of their narratives, namely how the contents of the pictures may be interrelated, an ability that is necessary for the construction of textual meaning. Results are discussed in relation to the limited so far research findings regarding written language production, especially concerning children with dyslexia. Also, directions of future research are indicated, along with implications for educational practice.

Subjectivity (Re)visited: A Corpus Study of English Forward Causal Connectives in Different Domains of Spoken and Written Language

ABSTRACT Through a structured examination of four English causal discourse connectives, our article tackles a gap in the existing research, which focuses mainly on written language production, and entirely lacks attests on English spoken discourse. Given the alleged general nature of English connectives commonly emphasized in the literature, the underlying question of our investigation is the potential role of the connective phrases in marking the basic conceptual distinction between objective and subjective causal event types. To this end, our study combines a traditional corpus analysis with 'predictive' statistical modeling for subjectivity variables to investigate whether and how the tendencies found in the corpus depend on the systematic preferences of the language user to encode subjectivity via a discourse connective. Our findings suggest that while certain conceptual structures are quite fundamental to the usages of English connectives, the connectives per se do not seem to have a steady part in categorization of causal events. Rather, their role pertains to the level of intended explicitness bound to specific rhetorical purposes and contexts of use.

Effects of critical literacy activities using children’s literature on primary English learners’ productive skills

This study investigated the effects of critical literacy activities using children’s literature on primary English learners’ productive skills. The researcher selected 31 fifth grade children and taught English lessons throughout a year. Data from diverse sources were analyzed mainly in a qualitative manner. The results were as follows: First, in terms of spoken language production, as a result of analyzing children’s speaking focused on their interactions, children were able to attempt various types of interactions such as one-person focused interviews, pair talk, or group discussions. As the class went on, children actively participated in meaningful interactions in which they exchanged their thoughts with meaning negotiation. Second, in terms of written language production, it was possible to activate children’s writing through various writing activities that stimulate children’s thinking. In other words, it developed into writing short sentences, writing expanded thoughts, and considering the readers while writing. This development was supported by the improvement of the children’s writing ability. Based on the results, some implications were included.

The Role of Learners’ Gender Differences in L2 “Inter-Language” Errors of Intermediate- Level Saudi Language Learners

Researchers have attempted to examine the unwanted forms (errors) appearing in learners’ spoken or written language production, which are often attributed to the learning process. The level of language proficiency differences in the second language (L2) learning between male and female learners has also been investigated. Most findings show that women are better language learners than their counterparts, (Burstall, 1975; Boyle, 1987), although this assumption has been debated, as other studies have proven otherwise. This study is an attempt to investigate errors resulting from inter-language in second language acquisition through speaking skills. These errors are analyzed in terms of syntax forms between male and female learners to explore the role of gender in error commission. The participants of this study are intermediate-level Saudi English language students. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. The findings reveal that inter-language errors in L2 speaking are less observed in males than in females. Furthermore, gender plays an important role in the types of errors produced by L2 learners. Errors resulting from the linguistics process of language development from L1 to L2 provide better understanding of L2 acquisition among different gender.

Vocabulary in learning processes towards conceptual understanding of equivalent fractions\u2014specifying students\u2019 language demands on the basis of lexical trace analyses

Although the teaching of vocabulary in mathematics lessons is requested in content- and language-integrated lesson designs, the clarification of the specific lexical language demands is still an open question for many mathematical topics. In a content- and language-integrated lesson design towards understanding the concept of equivalent fractions, the vocabulary (words and phrases) used by 17 students has been analyzed with qualitative means of data analysis. The qualitative in-depth analyses underline the importance of meaning-related vocabulary for making structural relations between the fractions in view explicit. Quantitative analyses of inventoried vocabulary for the four categories “self-initiated by students,” “triggered by teaching material,” “triggered by teacher,” or “triggered by peers” show the relations of collective and autonomous vocabularies from which the students retrieve their lexical means in oral and written language production.

The use of technology to facilitate written language production in people with aphasia

In an age when digital technology is becoming central to communication, writing is increasingly important, with messaging and emailing often replacing telephone calls [1]. As written communication shifts to the digital modality, technology poses both challenges and opportunities to people with aphasia. The cognitive and linguistic demands of using technology present potential barriers [2], but recent research has also explored the potential of technology to facilitate writing. This mini review will describe the evidence base for using technology to support written production in aphasia therapy. It will describe a variety of applications, designed to remediate the impairment and facilitate functional writing skills, along with compensatory approaches which aim to bypass impaired writing skills. It will explore the role of the speech and language therapist in selecting the most suitable technology for an individual's needs and in training people with aphasia to use the technology. In addition, it will discuss methods of assessing the technology proficiency and functional writing skills of people with aphasia, and the inherent challenges.