The First Language vs. the Foreign Language: A Study

Putting pen to paper when you don't speak the language is a challenge. When writing in a foreign language, Esther Odilia Breuer employs a boxing analogy to depict the challenging task of balancing cognitive processes and avoiding the "punches" of the first language (L1) to the foreign language (L2), which requires the writer's training, flexibility, and endurance (FL). The fight between the L1 and FL for supremacy is a major topic of Breuer's PhD dissertation, which Peter Lag has recently published as a book in the Text production and Medium series (Eds. Eva-Maria Jakobs and Dagmar Knorr). "when, how, and in which areas the battle between the L1 and the FL takes place, which methods [writers] use in order to shield themselves from the 'attacks' of the L1, and when they fail and have to take a strike" (First language against foreign language) (Chapter 1, p. 4). Writing in FL has been shown to have three distinct problems: (1) fluidity, (2) mistakes, and (3) revision, all of which Breuer examines in great length in comparison to writing in L1. Breuer also looks at the connections between these characteristics.