Second Language Writing Process

Analyzing learner’s text is something writing teachers do all the time. Apparently, its analysis provides the basis for everyday pedagogy in the classroom. Another significant matter to consider is in terms of first and second language compositions. Within this domain, there is a fundamental question over the holistic judgments of the ESL learners’ overall quality in writing strategies.

Writing in a second language is a challenging and complex process. The first language writing process includes producing content, drafting ideas, revising writing, choosing appropriate vocabulary, and editing text, writing in an L2 involves these elements jumbled with second language processing issues. In the case of lower L2 proficiency writers, these L2 issues

Benson (2002) emphasized that it is now generally accepted that transfer does occur, but is a far more complex phenomenon than hither to believed. Language transfer can be facilitative, in areas where two languages are identical. It can also result in avoidance, where a structure does not exist in the L1. And, it can lead to different rates of development: either delay, when learners whose L1 contains a particular form spend longer at that stage of development than L1 learners or learners whose L1 does not contain that form; or acceleration, for example, learners whose L1 has articles and reflexive pronouns learn these forms faster than learners in whose L1 they do not exist. The transfer can also lead to different routes of acquisition and it could also result to

Both L1 and L2 compositions were scored by three different raters who are TESL specialists from the Department of Languages & Literature. The total score for each sample serves as the mean of the three raters’ score. In identifying the research participants, this study employed the purposive sampling as the students were ranked according to their average grades in English 1, 2 and 3. The research participants of the study were the second-year Cebuano ESL students who were enrolled in English 5 (Content and Style) at Mindanao State University- Buug. A total of 20 participants were considered to provide writing samples needed for analyses.

The ESL Composition Profile (Jacobs, et. al. 1981) was used to measure students’ L1 and L2 writing performance. The rating was then utilized to score the collected samples in five differently-weighted criteria: Content, Organization, Sentence Construction, Voice, and