APPLICATION OF PROCESSABILITY THEORY TO SFI STUDENTS’ L2 WRITING COMPETENCIES

Abstract

Aim: The main purpose of this study is to study the written proficiency of SFI students at different morphological learning levels, and their ability to conjugate verbs, nouns, and adjectives using a wordless children book (frog-story). Theory: This study tries to link SFI levels of written proficiency to the levels of Pienemann hierarchy of language learning. Processability theory is a universal theory of L2 that is applicable to different languages. This theory has been adopted to cover not only the process of L2 acquisition but also the development of grammatical forms. PT demonstrated which L2 forms and which variants of grammatical forms are processable at every developmental stage. Method: The study is a linguistic study within language-learning using a combination of primarily quantitative and qualitative methods. It utilizes a commonly used pictorial frog-story (Mayer,1969) and an accepted taxonomic model of language acquisition, the Pienemann model of processability hierarchy. The morphemes written by SFI students were identified from qualitative data (narratives) and then processed via a quantitative method (independent sample t-test). Results: The study shows that Pienemann model can be applied to the writing skills of the students of C and D levels of SFI. In this study, the SFI students’ narrative abilities, the numbers of morphemes written, and students’ competences to conjugate and put in agreement three main word classes (verb, noun, and adjective) were evaluated. Independent Samples Ttest was used to confirm that writing competences of advanced-level (D level) students are higher than writing competences of beginner-level (C level) students. The analysis of the morphemes produced by the students revealed that beginner level (C level) students demonstrated the 1st, 2nd and 3rd levels of Pienemann model of processability hierarchy, while advanced-level students demonstrated higher results at the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th levels of the model.