Collaborative Writing in Individuals, Pairs, and Small Groups: A Classroom-based Study

DOI

10.2991/icadce-17.2017.206How to use a DOI?

Keywords

collaborative writing; individual; pair; group; L2

Abstract

Collaborative writing is increasingly gaining popularity in EFL writing classes, as it is widely believed to have positive effects on the overall quality of the written texts and nature of the writing process (Fern ndez Dobao, 2012). Nonetheless, the majority of the prior studies were restricted to be in laboratory settings. Moreover, many of the studies only focused on the comparison of individual-pair differences or individual-group differences in the produced texts. Not much evidence is available regarding the comparison of texts composed by individuals, pairs, and groups. The present study was aimed to fill in the gaps. Two intact classes of first-year EFL undergraduates (n=71, mean age=18.47) were asked to write an argumentative essay in an English writing class. Instructions on the writing topic (included grammar reviews) were provided by the teacher prior to the task. Eight of the students worked individually. The rest of the students were randomly arranged to work in pairs or groups of 3-4 people (12 pairs ,12 groups). Quantitative and qualitative evaluations were performed on the produced written texts. According to the results, the students who worked individually spent significantly less time on the task, and produced significantly more words than the pairs and groups. Such differences were not observed between the pairs and groups. The pair- and group-written texts had significantly less errors than the works composed by individuals, despite that higher percentage of error free clause/clause was found in individually written texts. The differences of complexity among the texts written by individuals, pairs, and groups were found to be statistically significant (from the highest to the lowest: group>pair>individual). Moreover, the texts composed by groups received significantly higher global evaluation scores than individual- and pair-written works (from the highest to the lowest: group>pair>individual).

Copyright

© 2017, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Ying Li
PY  - 2017/05
DA  - 2017/05
TI  - Collaborative Writing in Individuals, Pairs, and Small Groups: A Classroom-based Study
BT  - Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Arts, Design and Contemporary Education (ICADCE 2017)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 846
EP  - 851
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/icadce-17.2017.206
DO  - 10.2991/icadce-17.2017.206
ID  - Li2017/05
ER  -