COGNITIVE LOAD AND COPING STRATEGIES OF MULTILINGUAL ESL LEARNERS IN ACADEMIC WRITING: A QUANTITATIVE STUDY
Keywords:
Multilingual, Cognitive Load, Academic Writing, Coping Strategies, ESL LearnersAbstract
This study aims to analyze how Cognitive Load and Coping Strategies influence the academic writing of multilingual ESL learners. Both play an important role in academic writing as they together shape the quality of ESL learners’ writings. This research tries to combine to investigate both factors, as previous literature review mainly focuses on them separately. However, both have a significant impact on each other. This research uses quantitative methodology by surveying 200 ESL learners from the English department of Quaid-e-Awam University of Engineering, Science & Technology. This study is mainly grounded on Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) and Multilingualism. The questionnaire was developed based on the research objective and reviewed literature. The questionnaire was checked by two professors and a pilot study. The questionnaire was divided into two parts; each part contains 10 items. The first part deals with cognitive load, and the second deals with the coping strategies used by students. Data was collected though Google Forms and analyzed using SPSS software. Results indicate that the cognitive load of students writing in English is high, especially in the process of switching languages, converting L1 ideas into L2 language, concentrating and remembering language grammar and writing norms. Meanwhile, students also noted that they actively employed coping strategies to decrease the degree of mental load, particularly outlining, dividing tasks into smaller units, taking breaks, using computer-based language resources (e.g., translation apps and dictionaries), and receiving peer/teacher feedback. The research finds that although multilingualism has the potential to elevate the cognitive load of academic writing, strategic coping mechanisms can enable learners to deal with working memory constraints and enhance writing outcomes.
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