ABSTRACT
The present study intended to probe deeper into the issues of reactivity and depth of processing (DoP) by comparing learners’ think-aloud language, L1 or L2. Twenty-nine advanced learners of Spanish wrote a short story using a prompt in session 1, compared their writing with reformulated feedback in session 2 thinking aloud in the L1 or L2, and rewrote the story in session 3. Results indicated that thinking aloud in the L1 or L2 did not seem to affect learners’ performance at the final stage With regards to DoP, the L2 condition significantly produced more instances of overall lexical and grammatical processing. However, more instances of deep processing were found when learners thought aloud in the L1. These findings would suggest that at an advanced proficiency level thinking aloud in either language does not affect the outcome of the task, but a deeper processing is reached when verbalizing in the L1.
