IMMEDIATE VERSUS DISPLACED CONSCIOUSNESS IN WRITING: AN EFL STUDENT''S PROBLEM WITH A WRITING TASK

In language acquisition literature, the closeness language may have to its immediate context of situation is referred to as contextualized or situated use of language. In this sense, contextualization/situatedness is characteristic of spoken language and its corresponding type of consciousness/cognition, which may be called situated-immediate. Such situated cognition is understood as the closeness cognition may have to the immediate physical and social situation of the thinker. However, the term situated has in fact much broader meaning and is typically used to characterize all human cognition. Thus, it does not mean closeness to our physical-social situation in the sense of our immediate interaction with it, because human cognition/consciousness is frequently displaced. Written language calls for such a displaced mode of cognitive operation. The paper offers an analysis of a problem an EFL student has with a writing assignment. The analysis is based on the distinction between immediate consciousness, (characteristic of oral use of language) and displaced consciousness (typical of literate use of language and associated with an increase in metacognitive control). The analysis presented here can help us design better writing tasks, which are more adequate for developing advanced/academic literacy skills of our students.