ABSTRACT
Retrospective and introspective methods are often used to describe various aspects of L2 learners’ writing processes and revisions as well as how raters, teachers, or editors respond to L2 learners’ texts. The most common retrospective method is a stimulated recall task. Stimulated recall tasks (or retrospective verbal protocols ) involve having participants ref lect on their behavior while looking at some type of reminder (the stimulus ) of their behavior such as a video of their actions or a screen capture of their writing. The most common introspective method is a think-aloud task (also called concurrent verbal protocol ), which asks participants to talk about what they are doing as they do it. In addition, a very small number of studies have participants ref lect on their behavior in writing rather than orally. All of these methods can be implemented in a variety of ways and in combination with a variety of other techniques. What retrospective and introspective techniques have in common is that they try to describe cognitive processes that are normally not observable.
