Orthographic node-switches

Orthographic node-switches took place more often than phonological node-switches and their occurrence with respect to their distribution in the different task types differ distinctively (SE: 16.93%; FLNpl: 22.22%; FLNpe: 7.88%, FLFpl: 6.74%, and FLFpe:

7.97%).

As was described in Chapter 4.3.1, orthographic node-switches were subcategorised in L1 rule, capital letters, L1 way, one word, apostrophe, and others. Fig.

6.4 shows the distribution of the errors in the subcategories of orthographic node-switches for each text type.

The proportional distribution of orthographic node-switches in the subcategories differs strongly between plans and essays, and also between the FLNpl and FLFpl and between the FLNpe and FLFpe. Distributional tendencies in the subcategories in the plans are taken over to the academic essays in some subcategories. In other cases errors in certain subcategories occur in the proper essays, but they do not occur in the plans.

Fig. 6.4 Distribution of errors in orthographic node-switch

In the SE, 40.63% of the errors were found in the subcategory rules, 28.13% in the subcategory capital letter, 15.63% in one word, 9.38% in apostrophe, and 3.12% in L1 orthography as well as in others. In the FLNpl, only three of the subcategories are involved. 50% of the orthographic node-switches are located in the subcategory apostrophe, 37.5% in the subcategory capital letters and 12.5% in the subcategory one word. In the FLFpl, no orthographic node-switch in the subcategory apostrophe occurs at all, but 30.77% of the errors are located in L1 orthography, and 23.08% in one word and capital letter, respectively. L1 rules, apostrophe, and others all take 7.69%. In the FLNpe, the majority of orthographic node-switches are located in capital letters (48.48%) and in rules (22.12%). Node-switches in apostrophe make 12.12%, one word 9.08%, and L1 orthography 3.03%. In contrast to this, in the FLFpe capital letter is rather unimportant with only 5.71%, but here L1 rules (31.43%), L1 orthography (28.57%), and apostrophe (20%) provide the majority of node-switches. One word occurs in 11.43% of the cases, others in only 2.86%.

The differences in the results show that the planning methods have had an impact on the types of orthographic errors that occur. In planning, the writers concentrated on other features than in essay writing – in note-taking as well as in freewriting. At the same time, the different activation of the FL structures in the planning processes influenced the distribution of the errors in the subcategories in the final essays. The results also underline that the monitoring focused on different orthographic aspects in SE and in academic writing.

The majority of orthographic node-switches in the SE and a high proportion of orthographic node-switches in the final essays are located in the subcategory L1 rule. In the FLFpl it took place in only 7.69% of the cases, and none occurred in the notes. The

“rule” that was applied in many cases was that the orthography should represent the pronunciation (see Simon and van Herreweghe 2010: 303). Of course, these errors could be the result of missing orthographic proficiency, but since the FL words that were used are mostly not uncommon and it can be presumed that the participants know them well (e.g. pitty instead of pity; iPhone: SE), it is rather the application of the shallow German orthographic rules on the English deep orthography. The fact that these node-switches mainly occur in the proper texts which would be evaluated in ‘real-life’ (the SE and the final academic essays), but only rarely in the FLFpl and non in the FLNpl is interesting, since no final revisions were made in the plans. This suggests that the higher cognitive demands of writing a coherent text without planning (SE) and a well-structured text on a high stylistic level (academic texts) supported the application of the German orthographic writing rules. This could be due to the fact that the application of the German orthographic rules requires less effort than activating the correct FL English orthographic representations that are stored in long-term memory. Thus, the application of shallow L1 orthographic rules could be seen as a subconscious method of reducing the cognitive demands of FL writing (see also Figueredo 2006: 887).

The writers in the FLFpe and the FLFpl also executed the German orthography in words that are spelled similarly in the L1 and the FL more often than in any of the other texts (e.g. adress–‘Adresse’ instead of address, Owlet: SE). That is, in the process of freewriting in which monitoring was consciously lowered, German orthographic representations were more often the triggers for errors than German orthographic rules, and in the text produced after freewriting, both the direct L1 orthographic representation of the semantic entity and the L1 rule system had an impact. This indicates that in the FLFpe, in which hardly any of the writers took the time to read the freewritten text and to generate a text structure before starting to write the essay, the writers frequently diminished the demands of FL orthography by misusing L1 orthography.

In the FLNpe, the most prominent error subcategory in orthographic node-switches is capital letter (48.48%). This subcategory is also dominant in the FLNpl (37.5%). In the SE (28.13%) and the FLFpl (23.08%), the results are high as well. In contrast to this, the proportion is very low (5.71%) in the FLFpe. In the FLNpe and in the notes, the missing activation of FL and the higher usage of L1 in planning might have been the reason for

marking nouns with the help of a capital letter. One could argue that the academic genre also had an influence on the orthographic structures in this aspect in the FLNpe. The participants’ conceptual structures ‘knew’ that the usage of lower-case letters at the beginning of nouns is negatively evaluated in the academic context in German. Because of this, the academic register might have activated the capital letter rule in the L1 orthographic structure more strongly; it was executed, and was not perceived by the monitor as an error. In the FLFpe, the proportion of capital letter was lowest, because here the participants had actively activated the FL orthographic structures.

However, this explanation has two flaws: For one, the number of capital letter errors during freewriting itself, was high as well. In contrast to this, the participants in the L1Fpl committed a high number of errors in the subcategory capital letter (chapter 6.1.2), in that they used lower case letters at the beginning of nouns. That is, the academic register in the L1 was not successful in activating the L1 rule whereas in the FL it was, although it should have been more dominant in the L1 context. Still, this could be explained by the more automatised typing of lower-case letters in L1 vernacular writing and the higher productivity in L1 (Chapter 5.2), which made the participants overlook these errors. Yet, in the FLFpl the writers also worked quite fluently, and this explanation would be self-contradictory.

For two, in the case of apostrophe, the results were converse in the FLFpe, because the writers more often applied the German apostrophe rules (which are crucial for high standard writing) to the FL text (FLFpe: 20%, FLNpe: 12.12%). They did not separate the genitive marker -s from the word with the help of an apostrophe. These orthographic node-switches are more or less irrelevant in the FLFpl. On the other hand, in the FLNpl 50% of the orthographic node-switches are located in this category. The latter, again, speaks for a use of L1 in planning by note-taking. In the FLFpe, it might be that apostrophe is such a relevant error subcategory not because of node-switching in the strict sense but rather because of the less automatic pressing of the apostrophe key, and that the writers rather committed this error than slow down the writing process (which also led to the correct using of lower-case letters). Here, more tests are needed to come to a substantial explanation.

One word is another subcategory which, on first sight, might have been influenced by the L1 academic genre conventions. In the Teutonic academic register complex compounds are regarded as being academic (Clyne 1981: 213). The participants applied the L1 compound rule, which regulates that writers must write a compound as one word if

it consists of not more than three words. However, the subcategory is mainly relevant in the FLFpl (23.08%), and in the vernacular writing in the SE (16.63%). In all other tasks it is less important (FLNpl 12.5%, FLNpe: 9.09%, FLFpe: 11.43%). Because the error incidents in this subcategory is rather low in the final academic texts, it is proposed that the higher amount of one word incidents in the SE and the FLFpl are more often the result of typing speed. Because L1 Germans are accustomed to long compounds, they failed to notice these errors.

The subcategory others was active in only three text types. In the FLFpe, the FLFpl and in the SE, the participants used orthographically related, but semantically unrelated words. The participants were least aware of these phonological associates that made the reading/understanding of the texts more difficult in the writing tasks in which they were the most productive. In these conditions, the monitoring of the text production is lower in this respect than in the FLNpe or FLNpl, which might have been the result of the more fluent writing process in which the writers were more concerned with generating ideas and inserting them. This higher ‘traffic’ in the interfaces between conceptual structure and phonological and syntactic structures triggered more mismatches, which were overlooked.

All in all, the differences in the distribution of errors in the subcategories of orthographic node-switches point toward an on-line generation of orthographic representations in cases where rules can be applied (cf. Jackendoff 2002: 157). This works faster than the retrieval of representations that are stored in long-term memory. However, in FL academic writing in cases where the orthographic representation cannot be generated from rules because the structure is too deep, the application of the correct FL rules or the retrieval of the orthographic representations from long-term memory was unsuccessful in some cases, and either the L1 rule was applied or the orthographic representation of the L1 words was executed. This is probably due to the high cognitive demands in FL academic writing and the subconscious strategy of applying the ‘simpler’ rules in order to cope with the task. The proportions’ conspicuous differing in the subcategories indicates that the rules were triggered differently in the different conditions, and that because of this, some orthographic node-switches would occur more probably than others. This might be the result of an influence of the way the rules are stored and of the way in which these rules have been learned – whether they were explicitly taught or whether one acquired them more implicitly through reading and listening (see also Ellis 2002: 173, Mulligan 2003:

1114). Another possibility is that the different productivity and the differences in the speed

of execution made the participants use different strategies for generating the orthographic representations for their ideas.