Young EFL learners' pausing behavior: exploring pause thresholds in two proficiency levels

Abstract

The study of pausological behavior in L2 writing has been a matter of interest in recent years (see Lindgren & Sullivan, 2019), leading to a number of empirical studies which have explored pausing behavior from different angles. Among the many elements of pausological behavior, the pause threshold has aroused controversy in recent years (Alves et al., 2008) given its role in helping to discern lower-level and higher-level cognitive processes associated with L2 writing. While the research intent has focused recently on observing how pausological behavior varies according to the pause thresholds in adult L2 writers (Medimorec & Risko, 2017), this element of writing has not been examined in children L2 writers. For that purpose, this study analyzes pausological behavior and transcription fluency based on a picture-based story task by children L2 writers. Results indicate that pauses at word boundaries were more frequent than at sentence or paragraph boundaries. Likewise, the text boundary effect was not fully replicated, contrary to what studies in adult L2 writers have shown (see Wengelin, 2007).