CHAPTER 5. Writing skills 73 perspective into a teaching program typically results in an explicit approach with a focus on understanding language structure and producing accurate language. Operationalizing a DUB perspective into a teaching program, on the other hand, usually involves an implicit approach to morphosyntax and an emphasis on exposure and active use of the FL and uency in language production. One of the language domains that has been strongly associated with SB instruction is writing. e distance between the writer and the reader in both time and space implies the absence of feedback from the reader and therefore necessitates the creation of coherent and understandable texts. FL writers generally spend a great deal of time on the three cognitive sub-processes involved in writing: planning, formulation and revision (cf. Hayes & Flower, 1980). Indeed, both Fayol (1997) and Barbier (1997) have shown that the process of writing is much slower than the process of speaking, and it has been argued that especially in the area of accuracy in French FL writing, implicit knowledge might not be su cient: “in order to ensure accuracy in the low-level aspects of the text, writers also use their explicit knowledge, especially in the case of writing in L2 French” (Gunnarson, 2012, p. 249). Based on these opinions, it is reasonable to assume that writing skills are more likely to be a ected than other skills in a paradigm shi from SB explicit approaches to DUB implicit approaches. However, this has not been supported by a number of recent longitudinal classroom studies conducted in Dutch secondary schools with free response data. RECENT CLASSROOM RESEARCH In a classroom study comparing explicit instruction and implicit instruction, Andringa et al. (2011), who present an excellent overview of the explicit-implicit debate, tested eighty-one 12-18-year-old learners of L2 Dutch on their use of explicit knowledge in a free written response task and found that a er four months of L2 Dutch instruction in which exposure was controlled for, there was no advantage of explicit instruction over implicit instruction on a free writing response task. In a three-year longitudinal classroom study in the rst three years of a Dutch high school (with participants aged 12-15), Rousse-Malpat (2019) conducted a large cohort study with 229 students examining the development of speaking and writing pro ciency of French as a FL in several Dutch schools using the same teaching programs as in the present study: one structure-based and the other dynamic usage-based. A er three years, the DUB learners outperformed the SB learners in both skills, which may have been due to the large di erence in FL exposure. In one SB group, though, the teacher spoke L2 French for the greater part, and in Rousse-Malpat (2019) this group was compared to a DUB group of learners with the same scholastic aptitude level on writing skills. e SB group and DUB group scored the same on holistic scores, but the
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