The relationship between attention and academic writing

Abstract EN

This study examines the relationship between attention and second language (L2) writing in the Algerian academic setting as mediated by background information from a reading text.

The existence of such a relationship should help teachers assess their students' needs and better plan their lessons.

The present study inspects a correlational design in order to conclude whether individual differences in attention can predict their L2 academic writing performance.

The attention of 32 first year students of English at the University of Oum El Bouaghi has been measured using a test adapted from the Ruff 2 & 7 Test (Ruff & Allen, 1996) and their written performance was measured in terms of fluency, accuracy and syntactic complexity in a summary task.

Results revealed a correlational relationship between attention and writing complexity and no linear relationship between attention, fluency and accuracy, contrary to what was predicted.

Therefore, attention can be recognised as a predictor of academic writing performance as measured by complexity.