Fluency in Writing: A Multidimensional Perspective on Writing Fluency Applied to L1 and L2
Introduction
Some texts hardly require any effort to write, whereas other texts—or even sentences—are the result of an intense struggle, with the blinking cursor and the backspace key as leading actors. Most of us also experience “writing fluency” in a foreign language as more problematic than writing in our first language. But, what exactly are the underlying concepts of writing fluency? Does it mean that some writers are able to finish a text of 500 words in a shorter period of time than others? That they produce more characters or words in a comparable amount of time? That they pause less during writing? Or that they do not need to revise or edit their first draft as intensively?
Fluency has been on the research agenda of language researchers for many years. Especially in speech and reading studies, the concept is quite clearly defined (e.g., Bosker et al., 2013, Segalowitz, 2010, Skehan, 2003, Skehan, 2009). In writing, however, the definition of the concept is more vague. In contrast to spoken language, fluency in writing has no rhetoric function as such. If a person hesitates in phrasing a sentence in oral communication, or interrupts his or her discourse for a longer time, it will certainly be noticed by the listener and will probably influence the interaction. However, pausing during text production does not influence the reader-writer interaction, since a printed text normally does not (explicitly) reveal that the writer has paused at a certain instance in the text.
In writing research, fluency has been the topic of a myriad of studies, which focus for instance on developmental writing (Berninger et al., 1994, McCutchen et al., 1994), writing modes, juxtaposing oral and written modes or handwriting and typing (Olive et al., 2009b, Shanahan, 2006, Van Horenbeeck et al., 2012), and especially L1 and L2 writing (Chenoweth and Hayes, 2001, Johnson et al., 2012, Kobayashi and Rinnert, 2013, Kormos, 2012, Latif, 2012, Lindgren et al., 2008, Ong, 2014, Ong and Zhang, 2010, Snellings et al., 2002, Tillema, 2012). In most of these studies, a distinction is made between two or more groups of participants (e.g., 5th graders vs. 9th graders, L1 vs. L2), or in a within participants design the kind of tasks (e.g., narrative vs. argumentative tasks) or writing modes (e.g., handwriting vs. keyboarding) are compared. The relation between fluency and quality is also a recurring topic, although no clear conclusions could be drawn so far (see, for instance, Snellings et al., 2002, Yan et al., 2012).
In this article, we aim at describing an integrated approach to fluency, combining various perspectives. The approach that we present in this article is based on keystroke logging observations in a writing study that addressed the difference in fluency between L1 and L2 using two writing tasks. Starting from existing fluency measures, we will bring together traditional process and product measures, both in isolation and in combination with each other. Moreover, we will introduce new perspectives at different levels, by focusing on writer characteristics (individual measures), writing tasks (specific genres) and writing contexts (use of tools and sources). In a first stage, we will explore a wide range of potential fluency indicators. This results in a list of about 200 variables. Subsequently, we will reduce the number of indicators using correlation and Principal Component Analyses (PCA) to finally reach a comprehensible set of ten fluency indicators, grouped in four underlying categories. Our main aim is to construct a manageable set of components and variables that enable us to describe and measure writing fluency from a multidimensional perspective. In our point of view, separate measures and sub-dimensions of fluency are needed to paint a more comprehensive and fine-grained picture of fluency performance in writing.
Section snippets
Fluency in speech and writing
Most language users experience and even get frustrated by the fact that they are less fluent in L2 than in L1, even if they master a foreign language at a high proficiency level. To get a better understanding of what this fluency gap underlies and how to overcome it, a large number of studies have been set up, both in oral and in written communication (see also, Segalowitz, 2010 for a comprehensive review).
In the development of measures to define fluency, writing researchers have largely built
Fluency revisited
In order to define a wide range of fluency indicators, a quasi-experimental study was set up in which the participants produced two expository texts: one in L1 and the other in L2. The collected data were analyzed both from a product and a process perspective.
Results
In this section, we first present some product and process-based results from a L1-L2 contrastive perspective. As stated before, the results of this study is not the main focus, but the study is a means to describe fluency as a multimodal construct. By exploring the contrasts in a systematic way, we want to build a set of variables that can be used as potential fluency indicators. We start from a more traditional approach on fluency, and then extend our scope by taking into account the dynamics
Conclusion: Towards an Integrated Multidimensional Approach to Writing Fluency
This article aims at taking on a new approach to writing fluency. A multidimensional perspective of fluency should allow researchers to measure this concept by making the necessary differentiations and respecting the inherent stratification. We started from the traditionally used fluency measures and complemented them with variables derived from more recent writing-process research. Process characteristics (pauses and revisions) and aspects related to writing dynamics in relation to time were
Luuk Van Waes PhD is professor in Business and Technical Communication at the University of Antwerp, Belgium (Department of Management). Since 1985 he has been involved in different types of writing research, focusing on the influence of digital media on the organization of writing processes. He organized international conferences on a regular basis and published his research in several internationally reviewed journals and book series (e.g. within the Elsevier's series Studies in Writing:
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2022, Journal of Second Language WritingCitation Excerpt :While in our research higher-proficiency writers paused more often but for shorter periods, Barkaoui (2019) found that more proficient participants paused less often overall. A possible explanation might be that, following Van Waes and Leijten (2015), we used a considerably lower pause threshold (200 ms) than Barkaoui’s (2019) 2 s. Probably, a lower pause threshold enabled us to detect more of the pauses produced by higher-proficiency writers. It is likely that more proficient writers produced pauses shorter than 2 s more frequently, due to their more automatized linguistic and writing skills.
Complexity, accuracy, and fluency in L2 writing across proficiency levels: A matter of L1 background?
2022, Assessing WritingCitation Excerpt :Compared to two other dimensions of writing, accuracy is described as “the simplest and most internally coherent construct” (Pallotti, 2009, p. 592) and a measure of language control (Plakans et al., 2019). Finally, fluency refers to learners’ ability to produce words, clauses, and T-units in a given time (Abdel Latif, 2013; Van Waes & Leijten, 2015), making it a measure of automaticity and speed in using language (Plakans et al., 2019). Within the context of writing, Gebril and Plakans (2013) operationally define it as the total number of words per essay or text.
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2022, Computers and CompositionCitation Excerpt :The total number of words typed during the writing process can be seen as a general, but stable, indicator of text quality (Bennett, Zhang, Deane, & van Rijn, 2020). Hence, these results might indicate that Group B students’ writing processes were more fluent as reflected in higher text production and revision ratios (see Van Waes & Leijten, 2015). Although our sample size is small, such results have important implications.
Luuk Van Waes PhD is professor in Business and Technical Communication at the University of Antwerp, Belgium (Department of Management). Since 1985 he has been involved in different types of writing research, focusing on the influence of digital media on the organization of writing processes. He organized international conferences on a regular basis and published his research in several internationally reviewed journals and book series (e.g. within the Elsevier's series Studies in Writing: ‘Writing and Digital Media’ and ‘Writing and Cognition’). He is also the chief editor of the ‘Journal of Writing Research’ (ww.jowr.org).
Mariëlle Leijten, PhD, is a post-doc researcher for the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO) and is affiliated as an assistent professor to the University of Antwerp, Belgium. She is currently conducting a research project (FWO) on “Cognitive writing process characteristics in Alzheimer's disease.” In her other research projects, she focuses on writing and digital media, more specifically analyzing online writing processes in professional organizations via keystroke logging. She is co-founder and coordinator of the research instrument Inputlog (www.inputlog.net). She has published in several international peer reviewed journals (e.g., Written Communication, Interacting with Computers, Reading and Writing) and has edited a book in the Elsevier's series Studies in Writing: ‘Writing and Digital Media’.