The impact of motivating didactic interventions on the writing process and its output: the case of descriptive texts

Abstract

In this article we describe the impact of motivational didactic interventions on the process and the output of writing descriptive texts in Spanish as a Foreign Language by Dutch speaking students of the 3^rd Bachelor year of the Applied Linguistics curriculum at the Flemish KU Leuven university.  The texts produced by consecutive and simultaneous learner groups were stored and analysed in the Aprescrilov learner corpus application. The results of quantitative and qualitative tests show an important impact on both process (motivation) and output (lexical richness and dynamic style) of the writing of the descriptive texts.