Is planning time beneficial for anaphora resolution? A corpus-based study of L1 Spanish–L2 English learners

Abstract

Previous research has investigated the effect of planning time (PT) on L2 learners’ production regarding fluency, complexity, and accuracy, but its influence at the discourse level has been overlooked. Thus, this study explores the influence of PT on learners’ written performance regarding anaphora resolution (AR) and their pragmatically (in)felicitous choices of referring expressions (REs) in discourse since PT may reduce learners’ cognitive load and facilitate the production of pragmatically felicitous REs.

Two film-retelling tasks were completed by intermediate L1 Spanish–L2 English learners and English natives, further divided into a planning and a non-planning subgroup. Their compositions were analysed focusing on the REs produced, taking into consideration the pragmatic context. Results showed a PT effect on learners’ RE choices, although not all pragmatic contexts were equally affected. Planning time exerted a positive influence on topic continuity contexts, where learners produced more economical forms, but no effect was observed in topic shift scenarios.