The use of languages in think aloud protocols produced by multilingual writers living in a bilingual environment

Resumen

The piece of research is a case study analysing the use of five informants' language repertoire while protocolling to write in their second language, Spanish, and in a foreign language, English. The five informants are native speakers of Catalan (a Latin language spoken in the north-east of Spain), acquired Spanish as young children by means of natural exposition complemented with formal instruction throughout schooling, and were advanced learners of English as a foreign language enrolled in the final year of English Philology at the University of Lleida. The analysis of the think aloud protocols is complemented with the outcome of i) recall-sessions providing additional clues to help analyse the process followed by the subjects to write their texts; ii) structured interviews furnishing information about their language and writing training, uses and habits, and iii) an English placement test. The use of the informants' language repertoire in the think aloud protocols shows two qualitative similarities: all subjects deal with the categories most strictly related with writing in the target language, and they all seem to feel freer to code-switch when dealing with the Spanish task. However, the informants' profiles reveal five individuals approaching the writing task in a personal way which seems to affect the frequency, length and content of the different types of utterances in their languages repertoire. The profiles also show the informants reproducing the use of languages socially established within the social and educational environment.