Writing in a foreign language: teaching and learning

Abstract

This article is organised in five parts. The introduction defines the area covered and gives the rationale for a focus on FL writing research particularly in classroom contexts. The second section gives an overview of cognitive and social theoretical frameworks, noting that these have mainly been developed for L1 writing, and drawing attention to recent attempts to build models for FL writing. The third part covers research on process-based instruction, on teacher and peer feedback and on grammar correction. Part four deals with the growing use of computers in the teaching and learning of FL writing, looking particularly at work on word processing, software for teaching and research, at the relationships between network-based language teaching and process-oriented pedagogy and between writing and the development of oral communicative competence. The final part comments on research approaches, on FL writing and second language acquisition, and on post-process theory, concluding with a set of pedagogically-oriented research questions for the future.