Managing the Complexity of Revising across Languages

investigated this relationship in the context of the revising process. This article examines revision in controlled Li and L2 writing tasks. Four advanced ESL writers with differing first language backgrounds wrote two argumentative essays in their native languages and two in English. Revisions were then analyzed for specific discourse and linguistic features. The results, for the most part, indicate striking similarities across languages. However, some differences are noted, suggesting that while proficient writers are capable of transferring their revision processes across languages, they are also capable of adapting some of those processes to new problems imposed by a second language. Until quite recently, process-oriented research in ESL writing was dominated by studies that sought to identify those strategies and behaviors second language writers share and do not share with their first language counterparts (Raimes, 1985). Such comparisons between primary and nonprimary speakers of English are, of course, valuable if ESL researchers and teachers are to determine the relevance of first language pedagogy for second language writers. Yet they do not represent the only direction for comparative studies with consequences for theory and practice. Researchers are now beginning to examine ESL writers' behaviors and strategies in both their first and second languages, a much needed area of investigation that Zamel (1984) has claimed may have implications for the notion that composing processes are universal and transitive across languages. While most of these crosslanguage studies have focused on general surveys of composing processes (Chelala, 1981) or concentrated on text planning (Lay, 1982, 1983; Jones & Tetroe, 1987), to date, only one significant study has been conducted on revising (Gaskill, 1987). Yet revision, as