The effect of collaborative writing in an EFL secondary setting

Abstract

Collaborative writing (CW) has been proven advantageous to enhance the second and foreign language skills of university students. However, little research to date has explored whether CW practices are fruitful for secondary school learners in foreign language (FL) contexts, a population characterized by low language proficiency levels, and few opportunities to engage with the FL. The present classroom-based study examines CW in this setting and aims to determine whether CW fosters language opportunities, operationalized as language-related episodes (LREs), which will allow learners in low-input scenarios to compose better texts. Two parallel intact classes were studied: a control group ( n = 16) which produced an argumentative essay individually, and an experimental group ( n = 16) which did so in pairs while recording their interactions. The findings revealed that the pairs produced shorter but more accurate and slightly more lexically and grammatically complex texts and obtained higher scores in content, structure and organization. Collaboration afforded students the opportunity to pool ideas, deliberate over language use, and provide each other with feedback (collective scaffolding). Most importantly, collaborating seemed to be beneficial for all intermediate secondary learners and, thus, a useful strategy for improving FL writing skills in the secondary school context.

Cloud-Based Collaborative Writing to Develop EFL Students’ Writing Quantity and Quality

“…Therefore, the second hypothesis was accepted. This result agrees with the results of some studies which found that CBCW yielded the production of better quality texts (e.g., Abrams, 2019;Al-Shumaimeri, 2011;Arslan & Sahin-Kizil, 2010;Bailey & Judd, 2018;Beltrán, 2010;Daskalogiannaki, 2012;Dobao, 2012;Doult & Walker, 2014;Kessler & Bikowski, 2010;Mak & Coniam, 2008;McDonough & García-Fuentes, 2015;Mills & Exley, 2014;Myers, 2014;Shukor & Noordin, 2014;Strobl, 2014;Togatorop, 2015;Villarreal & Gil-Sarratea, 2019;Wichadee, 2011;Yeh, 2014;.…”

“…Therefore, this hypothesis was rejected. This result agrees with the results of other studies which found that CBCW did not lead to the production of longer texts (e.g., Elola & Oskoz, 2010;Villarreal & Gil-Sarratea, 2019) and disagrees with the results of some other studies which found that writing collaboratively makes writers produce more content (e.g., Daskalogiannaki, 2012;Doult & Walker, 2014;Mak & Coniam, 2008;Mills & Exley, 2014;Storch, 2011;. A possible explanation for this result is the small number of participants (N = 21).…”

“…Some studies found a positive effect for CBCW on writing quantity (e.g., Daskalogiannaki, 2012;Doult & Walker, 2014;Mak & Coniam, 2008;Mills & Exley, 2014;Myers, 2014;Storch, 2011;Yim, Wang, Olson, Vu, & Warschauer, 2017) and quality (e.g., Abrams, 2019;Al-Shumaimeri, 2011;Arslan & Sahin-Kizil, 2010;Bailey & Judd, 2018;Beltrán, 2010;Daskalogiannaki, 2012;Dobao, 2012;Doult & Walker, 2014;Kessler & Bikowski, 2010;Mak & Coniam, 2008;McDonough & García-Fuentes, 2015;Myers, 2014;Shukor & Noordin, 2014;Strobl, 2014;Togatorop, 2015;Villarreal & Gil-Sarratea, 2019;Wichadee, 2011;Yeh, 2014;. Therefore, the researcher decided to investigate the effect of CBCW on both the quantity and quality of EFL students' writing.…”

The influence of task repetition type on young EFL learners’ attention to form

“…In line with these findings, the evidence suggests that collaborative written tasks trigger more negotiation between learners and offer greater benefits for learning than tasks that do not require learners' composition of a text (Nassaji & Tian, 2010;Teng, 2017). When writing together, learners tend to produce more accurate compositions than they do when writing individually (Villarreal & Gil-Sarratea, 2019;Wigglesworth & Storch, 2009). Finally, the discussion and resolution of the LREs learners engage in when working together provide them with further opportunities for L2 learning (Storch, 2013).…”

Exploring Acehnese EFL College Students’ Perceptions on Collaborative Writing

“…This experience resulted in learning and knowledgebuilding in idea generation, which they later applied in their individual writing. As a result, writing produced by collaborative writing is superior in terms of grammatical accuracy and linguistic complexity (Villarreal & Gil-Sarratea, 2019). In fact, according to de Oliveira & Smith (2019), when learners were assisted by a more capable partners, they were able to produce more target language.…”