COLLABORATIVE WRITING AMONG SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNERS

IN ACADEMIC WEB-BASED PROJECTS

RESULTS

INTRODUCTION

This research aims to understand the collaborative writing process involving more

than two non-native English speaking writers working through technology in a shared

Web bases.

Collaborative Writing has contributed to:

•A higher quality of writing (Storch, 2005);

•A better sense of audience (Leki, 1993);

•Increased pooling of knowledge (Donato, 1994) and ownership (Storch, 2005) in the

writing process;

•Increased student motivation (Kowal & Swain, 1994; Swain & Lapkin 1998);

•Attention to discourse structures as well as grammar and vocabulary usage (Swain &

Lapkin, 1998).

Specifically, this study focuses on the following research questions:

1. How do L2 students engage in the collaborative writing process using Web-based

word processing tools?

2. What is the nature of group participation in Web-based collaborative writing?

MATERIALS AND METHODS

•Participants: 38 non-native students in a pre-academic orientation program from a

Midwestern university.

•Focus: Prepare students for the academic writing.

•Organization: Students worked in small groups of three to four members.

•Period: 3 weeks (12 class hours a week with additional outside work).

DATA COLLECTED AND ANALYSIS

Table 1. Language Related Contribution Types, Descriptions, and Examples Contribution Type

Table 2. Non-Language Related Contribution Types, Descriptions, and Examples Contribution Type

RESULTS DICUSSION

1. Engagement of participants:

•Google Docs can be flexible and it allows the fluidity in the process of collaboration and writing.

•Students may focus on the product more than the process.

•Web-based word-processing tools also allow observations of student behavior.

•Students demonstrate attention to the process through collective scaffolding, it means they

demonstrated willingness and ability to work together.

•The tool allowed the researchers to observe the students development through planning,

writing, revising/editing, and formatting.

•There was fully negotiation between being a member of a group and an autonomous writer.

2. Students’ participation differs:

•Some students were more prepared for writing in the academic genre, others with the Web-

based word processing program and collaborative writing tasks.

•The teammates took roles on explicitly or implicitly,

•There are differences in overall comfort and confidence with writing academically in English.

CONCLUSION

Observing student participation through the framework of collaborative learning allowed us to

reflect on the nature of how students interact with others in varied ways. So, those practices have

recently become possible in the context the emerging Web basis technologies.

It is important to consider the co-evolution of Web-based word processing and emerging student

abilities for using such tools; to reflect upon the relationship between the evolution of their use,

and the related pedagogy in order to identify approaches to encourage flexible pedagogical

practices.

Team 1 Team 2 Team 3

Total (Teams 1-3)

Action(% of Total)

Student Action Language Related Contributions

Meaning 131 93 40 264 55.70%Other 25 35 4 64 13.50%Form 29 27 7 63 13.29%

Non-Language Related Contributions

Formatting 16 17 11 44 9.28%Plan 10 23 4 37 7.81%Non-project communication

1 1 0 2 0.42%

Totals of LRCs and NLRCs

212 196

66 474 100.00%

Contribution Type Description Examples

Form

Changes made in capitalization, part of speech, pluralization, pronouns, punctuation, spacing, spelling, or tense.

Changes from “literary” to “literature”; “he” to “we”; from a period to a comma, from present to past tense.

Meaning Text that contributes meaning to the paper added, deleted, or replaced.

Replacement: “This fact will help all of us to integrate successfully in the community at our host university and to improve ourselves and our points of view on many different topics.” “Many ” replaced by “different”

Other Text that does not contribute to meaning added, deleted, moved, or replaced.

Deleting the stand-alone phrase “structure of our project.” from the end of the paper

Contribution Type Description Examples

Format Changes made in date and in text formatting or indentation.

Change from “January 4, 2009” to “4 January 2009”. Font size bigger.

Plan Project planning text added, deleted, moved, or replaced. Adding planning text:.

Non-Project communication

Communicative text for non project-related purposes added or deleted.

Adding a message about an event not related to the project.

Amanda S., Carolina S., Flávio O., Marina B., Vanessa B.

Kessler, G; Bikowski. D, Boggs. J (2012). Collaborative writing among second language learners in academic web-based projects. Retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/issues/february2012/kesslerbikowskiboggs.pdf