ABSTRACT

This study tested the knowledge processing stage of Leow’s (2015) model by addressing the role of type of prior knowledge (recent vs. old) in L2 learners’ depth of processing (DoP) as they produce a narrative in which the target item was the English simple past. In addition, whether DoP was correlated with subsequent performance was also addressed. Half of the university-level Brazilians learning English as L2 participants had prior knowledge of both target 10 regular and 10 irregular verb forms while the other half only knew the regular forms (baseline) before writing the composition. The design was a pretest–composition writing–immediate posttest–delayed posttest one week after, and think-alouds were employed to operationalize DoP. The results indicated that recent prior knowledge led to a higher DoP with much cognitive effort while old prior knowledge promotes a substantially lower DoP, lending support to Leow’s model. A positive correlation was also found between high DoP and superior performances on both the immediate and delayed posttests.