Linguistic alignment in EFL continuation task : creative imitation of the lexicon and style in literature-based writing

Abstract

This pro gradu thesis is a qualitative case study on L2 writing that investigates how and why three lower secondary English as foreign language (EFL) learners mimic the source text lexicon and style in a literature-based continuation task. As research materials, the participants’ written story endings, screen recordings of the story endings, and stimulated recall interviews were used and coded qualitatively. As a result of data analysis, the following categories of source text mimicry were established: direct lexical alignment, partial lexical alignment, direct sentential alignment, partial sentential alignment, alignment with register, and alignment with genre.

This study demonstrates that young EFL writers mimic the source text lexicon both directly and partially by reusing words, phrases, and sentences in their story endings in order to reproduce and engage with the source text lexicon and story world. However, reusing longer lexical units and lower-frequency words was a rarer practice. Importantly, the participant’s linguistic and narrative creativity could be seen from the synonyms, adaptations, and extensions they created based on the source text, which were often used to further build the original storyline and its milieu. Unlike in previous studies on L2 alignment in continuation tasks, this study also shows that the EFL writers mimic stylistic features of the source text (i.e., word register and textual formatting) and that the process of writing story endings often includes pauses in writing and bursts of rewriting as the participants engage with the source text and integrate its features into their own story endings.

Overall, the creative imitation of the original lexicon and stylistic features shows that young EFL writers can simultaneously align with the source text and write creatively by drawing inspiration outside the source text and by applying one’s linguistic knowledge. Thus, linguistic and stylistic alignment with the source text is a complex and multifaceted process that goes beyond mindless technical mimicry of the source text lexicon. The findings of this study, therefore, indicate that literature-based continuation tasks have pedagogical potential in terms of vocabulary learning, genre learning, and learning to write short stories in a second language.