Educational Research Journal , Vol. This research focuses on the sub-process of pausing in the composing process in English and in Chinese.
Pauses are moment of physical inactivity during writing.
The research subjects were asked to think aloud before writing. They were videotaped during writing and were stimulated to recall their writing activities after writing. It was found that more subjects paused to retrieve and to select information, to reflect on logical problems and to transform ideas when writing in Chinese than in English. However, when writing in English they often paused to look for words, to spell words and to think about matters of grammar and mechanics. To a large extent, the pausal activities can reflect the foci of thinking of the subjects during writing.