Fluency and Cognitive Effort During First- and Second-Language Notetaking and Writing by Undergraduate Students
Abstract
This study concerns the cognitive effort expended and the difficulties experienced by undergraduate students as they took notes and wrote a text based on a lecture given in French, their primary language (L1), and in English (L2). The 21 participants had studied English (L2) for 7 years before attending the university and they had taken 3 years of intensive courses at the university in order to obtain their first diploma in English (“license”). Participants were first trained on a secondary task that allowed us to measure their cognitive effort while they performed two other main tasks in both languages, namely (1) listening and taking notes on the main ideas of the lecture, and (2) writing a text based on their notes. Participants also answered a questionnaire about their difficulties with comprehension, taking notes, making use of their notes, and writing in both languages. The results indicated that writing processes were more effortful than notetaking. Students’ performance on the writing task did not vary across languages. In contrast, the cognitive effort associated with taking notes was greater for L2 than for L1, and writing speed was slower. More difficulty was also experienced for notetaking, especially in L2, than in writing.
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