Upper-intermediate and advanced EFL undergraduate students? revision of written texts: Similarities and Differences.

San Miguel de Tucumán

Congreso; II Jornadas de Actualización para Profesores de Inglés; 2010

Universidad Nacional de Tucumán

Research on foreign and second language composition writing highlights the importance of revision in the process of writing and suggests that both second and foreign language writers enlarge their repertoire of revision strategies and have a deeper concern over global aspects of their texts as they acquire greater proficiency in the second language. It seems necessary; however, to look into the way in which revision develops within an EFL academic setting so as to gain more understanding of students? relative progress regarding this particular aspect of writing. The descriptive text-based study reported here has explored the kind of revision changes EFL undergraduate students at different levels of instruction make while writing a text in English. A similar writing task was given to undergraduate students at upper-intermediate and advanced levels in an EFL teacher-training programme and their written productions collected for analysis. Textual data was gathered and the revision moves evident in the texts were classified and analyzed. The results have shown that both groups of students favour surface revision over revision on content and organization and that, within the former type of revision, they tend to restrict the focus upon small units of language such as the word and the phrase. These findings give support to the conclusion that similar revision moves characterize the textual production of upper-intermediate and advanced undergraduate students.