DO ESL WRITERS THINK IN L1 OR L2?

DO ESL WRITERS THINK IN L1 OR L2?

Writing has become an important part of English as a second language programs at most levels in Taiwan since the late 1970s. It is a required course for English majors at the college or university levels in Taiwan. The inclusion of writing in English programs in recent years and wide acceptance of writing as a utilitarian skill by the general public speak for the importance of writing in our schools and society. However, the sad state of affairs in our profession is that stressing writing in ESL does not guarantee its success at the end of a program. The effectiveness of a program depends to a large extent on theoretical orientation, teaching materials, and pedagogy. As a matter of fact, teaching writing has posed a tremendous problem to the teachers and learning writing has been a hard task for the ESL learners all over the world and here in Taiwan there are no exceptions. The aim of this paper is to find answers to our problem in the title by examining research in the literature, responses from student surveys, and samples of student writing. The term ESL, English as a second language, is used interchangeably with EFL, English as a foreign language in our situation. L1 refers to a writer's primary or native language and L2 refers to a writer's second or foreign language, which in our case is English as the first foreign language.