The Writing Process of Bilingual Students with Focus on Revisions and Spelling Errors in Their Final Texts

Abstract

Research on writing that focuses on what writers do when they compose shows that processes such as planning, transfer to writing and editing are recursive and affect the writing process of first and second language writers differently. To our knowledge, what has yet to be explored in research is the writing process of young bilingual students. The present study focused on the revisions and spelling errors made by 9-year-old bilingual students during a writing activity in their L2. Details about the writing process (e.g., revisions) were taken from statistics registered in the keystroke logging program ScriptLog and were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Results from the quantitative analysis show that the mean proportion of the students’ revisions is relatively low compared to results in previous research. The qualitative analysis showed both surface and meaning changes; the latter were found at both the micro- and macrostructural levels. Bilingual students exhibit a creative writing process in which several meaning changes occur in a language (in this case Swedish) that they are particularly competent in. The spelling error analysis indicated that the bilingual students make the same type of spelling errors as monolingual students in their initial stages of learning to write.