To address the second research question on possible backward transfer, hypothesis (2) predicts that there is a relationship between L2 proficiency and the use of the L1 discourse pattern of because-initial information sequencing in the L1 writing of Chinese ESL learners. As shown in Table 9 and Figure 5, the Chinese learners at all proficiency levels are found to predominantly use the L1 discourse pattern in the Chinese DT, confirming the research claim that SC—MC information sequencing is a fundamental principle in Chinese discourse. However, the Level 2 Chinese learners behave rather differently in the Chinese SCT. As shown in Table 9 and Figure 4, L2 proficiency has a negative effect on the performance data in the Chinese SCT, due to the meager use of the L1 discourse pattern by the Level 2 Chinese learners at the sentence level. Explanations pertaining to the negative L2 effect are suggested below.
5.2.1 The possible source of the negative L2 effect: Backward transfer (L1 attrition and L1 change)
There is some research evidence to indicate that proficient L1 writers are shown to gradually decline in their L1 writing skills (Carson and Kuhn 1994) or change in their L1 processing strategy (Su 2001) in an L2 environment. From another perspective, L1 attrition or L1 change, together termed more generally as backward transfer, is considered to be a rule-governed process, one that is affected by the kinds of data or sources of knowledge available to the learner to be used as evidence in testing the fitness of his construction of L1 grammar. In a similar vein, it has been argued that L1 speakers need evidence not only to develop an L1 system but also to maintain it (Seliger 1991). In other words, backward transfer occurs not because of lack of use but because of lack of confirming evidence that L1 syntax is correct in an L2 community (Sharwood Smith and Van Buren 1991). Thus, for the Chinese ESL learners, it is possible for an L2 pattern to begin to influence on the linguistic domain of L1, since their linguistic context is that of a U.S academic
community where the L1 discourse pattern is either not preferred (lack of confirming evidence) or not much used (lack of exposure). However, it remains to be explained as to why backward transfer, as the result of a negative L2 English effect, has occurred only with the Chinese SCT but not the Chinese DT.
5. 2. 2 Distribution of attention due to different task types
The inconsistent results for the Chinese SCT and the Chinese DT may have been due to attention distribution between different task types, as has been discussed in section 5.1.2 with respect to the English SCT and English DT. To recapitulate, the Chinese learners might have equally seen the Chinese SCT as a grammar task, which facilitates their overuse of the unmarked L2 pattern (i.e. because-medial structure) leading to their underrepresented use of the L1 discourse pattern (because-initial structure), even in their L1 Chinese writing. On the other hand, the cognitively demanding nature of the Chinese DT prevents the Chinese learners from focusing solely on the L2 form, so they revert to their preferred L1 discourse pattern in the Chinese DT. This may explain why the backward transfer or reverse transfer of an L2 form into the L1 (Cook 2003), is not manifest in the Chinese DT. Hence, it appears that whether backward transfer will occur has something to do with the Level 2 Chinese learners’ ability or inability to attend to the target-like L2 pattern, which may in turn be contingent upon the nature of the task types.
Also worthy of special mention is the significant issue of L1 attrition in terms of the distinction between competence and performance. The former refers to the tacit linguistic knowledge of the learner, whereas the latter the control of that knowledge, which has to do with the nature of the “online accessing and processing”
(Seliger and Vago 1991). In general, L1 attrition literature appears to accept a competence dimension as well as a control dimension (Sharwood Smith and Van Buren 1991). However, it is clear that the backward transfer (a more neural and general term than language attrition), which occurs to the Level 2 Chinese learners in the Chinese SCT rather than the Chinese DT, has more to do with the online access mechanisms (performance and control) than with the available tacit knowledge itself (competence).
The restructuring process of the Level 2 Chinese ESL learners
In their L1 Chinese task, the Level 2 Chinese learners produce their L1 native discourse pattern significantly less than the Level 1 and the Level 3 Chinese learners.
Similar to their unusual linguistic behavior in the English SCT (i.e. overuse of the
target-like L2 MC—SC pattern), the Level 2 Chinese learners’ underuse of their native SC—MC pattern in the Chinese SCT needs to be explained. As have been indicated previously regarding the Chinese learners’ performance on the English tasks, the research view of SLA as a restructuring process can also offer an explanation. Sharwood Smith (1983), for instance, argues that restructuring is a process that could occur in the learners’ L1 or L2 system in order to minimize the overall complexity of the learning or processing required in L2 acquisition.
According to him, L1 attrition is a restructuring process in the direction of simplification in the L1 and/or L2 system. L2 learners will tend to compare structures across languages and transfer the less marked L2 structure into their L1, based both on markedness principles and on the specific aspect of the L1 or L2 system being focused on. Moreover, research suggests that backward transfer (e.g.
L1 attrition) is not a phenomenon separate from forward transfer (i.e. NL influence).
Rather, it is evidence of the inter-transfer of related L1 and L2 writing proficiencies, resulting from the generalized underlying discourse competence available to L1 and L2 (Cummins 1981, 1996, Carson and Kuehn 1994). Hence, the L1 system of the Chinese ESL learners may have been undergoing restructuring, and this may account for the backward transfer experienced by the Level 2 Chinese ESL learners.
However, it has been pointed out that backward transfer or L1 attrition is not a simple phenomenon occurring in every individual, but is contingent upon the L2 proficiency level in relation to a “critical threshold” (Neisser 1984, De Bot and Clyne 1989, De Bot and Weltens 1991). It is likely that the Level 2 Chinese learners, given their intermediate level of L2 proficiency, have not yet reached this threshold and are thus susceptible to backward transfer, whereas the Level 3 Chinese students have arguably reached the threshold and so are relatively immune to such a process. Additionally, although the Level 1 Chinese learners have not reached the critical threshold as the Level 2 Chinese learners, they are relatively immune to backward transfer. This is because, given their current limited L2 processing and access level, they do not know L2 resources well enough to transfer them back to their L1. As mentioned before, backward transfer requires crosslinguistic awareness on the part of the learners, which is yet to be developed in the Level 1 Chinese learners who are still in an autonomous, pre-structuring stage, largely independent of the L2 system (Anderson 1983).
The end of this section summarizes the linguistic behavior of the Chinese learners according to their L2 proficiency. The Level 1 Chinese learners are presumably in an autonomous (i.e. pre-restructuring) stage. Therefore, they may not have been aware that because-medial structure is the target-like unmarked L2 pattern and are apt to use their L1 discourse pattern (i.e. because-initial structure)
wherever possible, until they begin to discover how it differs from the use of the L2 target-like pattern (Corder 1978). Thus their use of the L1 discourse pattern is consistent in both L2 English and L1 Chinese tasks, and in the Chinese tasks, there is no apparent trace of the backward transfer phenomenon.
On the other hand, the Level 2 Chinese learners, given their intermediate L2 level, might have learned that because-medial structure is the target-like unmarked L2 use. Thus, in their attempt to approximate the target-like L2 English because-medial information sequencing in the L2 system (Ellis 1985), the Level 2 Chinese learners may have experienced a restructuring in their L1 system in order to reduce the processing complexity of their L2 acquisition (Sharwood Smith 1983, Lightbown 1985). In other words, to approximate the newly-learned L2 use, the Level 2 Chinese learners may have experienced a restructuring toward simplification in the L1 such that the L1 discourse pattern is replaced by the target-like L2 pattern in the Chinese SCT. Hence, a restructuring of the Level 2 Chinese students’ L1 system might have been the “latent process” underlying their L1 backward transfer experience (Jaespart, Kroon and Van Hort 1986).
Finally, as the English proficiency of the Level 3 Chinese learners increases, they may have “reverted” to improving their L1 skills at the end of the restructuring process (Lightbown 1985). Consequently, on the L1 tasks they are able to display a high frequency of use in the L1 discourse pattern in the Chinese tasks. Hence, English to Chinese backward transfer on the Chinese SCT is only obvious in the Level 2 Chinese learners, because they presumably are still at the interim stage of restructuring. In contrast, backward transfer does not occur to the Level 1 or Level 3 Chinese learners, because they may either have not begun restructuring (Level 1) or already completed the restructuring process (Level 3).