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Written language development in adolescents : pause patterns and syntax in the writing process

På svenska

Author

  • Pia Gustafsson

Summary, in English

In this study pause patterns during writing were investigated and compared in a developmental perspective. The material consisted of keystroke logging recordings of the writing process of 30 expository texts written by 30 persons from the age groups 13-year-olds, 15-year-olds and 17-year-olds. A total number of 3080, all pauses longer than two seconds, were identified and categorized, according to the syntactic context in which they occur as initial, medial or final pauses at paragraph, clause, phrase and word boundaries. The additional categories paragraph initial and editing pauses were used, a total number of eleven different categories.
The results showed that the 17-year-olds spent significantly more pause time in the production of phrases than the younger age groups. Other results pointed in the same direction and the interpretation of this result is in line with cognitive views of written language production where processes that are more demanding manifest themselves as pauses. It is also in line with developmental models that point out that one important trait of language development in adolescence is expanding noun and other phrases.

Publishing year

2012

Language

English

Document type

Student publication for Bachelor's degree

Topic

  • Languages and Literatures

Keywords

  • syntax in writing development
  • pauses in writing
  • writing processes
  • writing development
  • keystroke logging

Supervisor

  • Victoria Johansson (Fil Dr)