When and Why Talking Can Make Writing Harder

Abstract

This chapter reports on a quasi-experimental study investigating the effects of talk on the writing of argument texts by second language students in a New Zealand high school. Results are compared on variables related to three conventional text quality measures (communicative quality, ideas and organisation, and grammatical accuracy and complexity), and also on variables specifically related to the rhetorical organisation of argument texts (frequency of claims, grounds and elaboration of grounds, as identified by Toulmin, Rieke, and Janki, 1984). The results of the study indicate that the opportunity to work with a peer before and during writing had limited and specific effects on the texts the students wrote. Working in a solitary way resulted in significantly higher mean scores for linguistic accuracy and complexity (a general text quality measure). Significant and positive effects for opportunity to talk with a peer were seen in the quantity of grounds-related propositions (an argument text measure), but only when students wrote texts that appeared to require more domain-specific knowledge to support the claims made in their argument texts. This chapter seeks to explain these effects with reference to the notion of attentional resources and aspects of noticing. A number of task and learner factors are explored to explain the way in which attentional resources are divested and the degree to which learners attend to or notice aspects of the language and content experienced in the interaction.