THE MUTATION OF WRITING HABITS AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR L2 WORD LEARNING

Although applied linguists agree that developing phonological and orthographic representations of new words is key to recalling word form and underpins the ability to process new language, research on the mnemonic benefits of writing down target words during L2 vocabulary acquisition has produced mixed results [1, 2, 3]. In addition, writing is facing increasingly keen competition from typing in the digital age. Today, paper-and pencil communication has had to make room for key-to-screen communication in educational as well as professional contexts. From research in educational psychology we know that taking notes on laptops instead of writing longhand involves shallower information processing which negatively affects performance on knowledge tests [4]. In the case of L2 word learning the phonological and orthographical processing that takes place when noting down new words might be sensitive to variations in the conditions under which this processing takes place, i. e. writing versus typing. In our study a classroom experiment was set up to look into the differential impact of writing or typing new words on immediate and delayed receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge as compared to a word learning condition that involved no production of output. The main goal of the study is to verify findings concerning the trade-off relation between semantic and structural processing when learning new words. A second research question is to investigate whether the structural elaboration processes that take place when writing new words lead to similar learning gains than when typing new words. Thirdly, we want to explore whether learners had a preferred learning condition. The main results of this study show that the words that had been typed showed less attrition in the delayed test than the words that had been written. This will be explained in light of the multimodality of the output condition.