The purpose of this study is to explore L1 use in L2 writing from the perspective of Vygotskian Sociocultural Theory (SCT). We examine whether generating ideas in L1,compared to generating ideas in L2, results in inferior L2 writing. The participants were 42 Korean EFL students. As part of the course requirements, the students were required to hand in 400-word essays on a given topic. Once the writing was completed,they were asked to write down about what language(s) they used to prepare for the assignment and why they used this language or these languages. The data analysis used here stems from two ways in which the data were coded, use of language(s) during idea generation and a global-level essay analysis. This study has shown that more than half of students use their L1 while writing in L2 to some extent. Regarding the effect of L1use on L2 text quality, L1 use does not appear to be negatively related to L2 text quality. This does not confirm the results of earlier research, which suggested that L1use has a detrimental effect on L2 text quality. We argue that the L1 is an already internalized and very effective meditational means that learners will resort to,principally for discovering and shaping meaning and as support in moments of cognitive difficulty.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate text comprehension from a sociocultural perspective and then, to find out more about the ways in which L2 readers comprehend and recall L2 texts. While many analyses of written recall protocols focus on propositional contents or an analysis of syntactic error, Sociocultural Theory provides us with an additional analytic tool: the linguistic properties of the recall protocols. This follows from Vygotsky's fundamental argument that speech, in addition to its communicative function, bears a cognitive, self-oriented function and thus, is used to plan and carry out mental activity. In this paper, we undertake an analysis of the written recall protocals produced by high-school learners of English as a foreign language. We argue that when faced with cognitively difficult situations, L2 readers often externalize their inner order as private writing in order to attain and maintain control of their mental activity in the task of reading and recall. In fact, the linguistic features of the written recall protocols reflect the underlying mental processes which L2 readers deploy in problem-solving situations.