Department of English Language Teaching, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran
Abstract
This study investigated the effect of Collaborative Summary Writing on EFL students’ second language development. The participants of the current study were 60 EFL students in two intact classes who were passing a writing course. In the experimental group, teacher explained about the summary writing and students were supposed to write their summaries in class collaboratively by the help of their peers and teacher. All papers were checked by the teacher and they discussed about the received feedback in class. However, in the control group students wrote their summaries at home and the next session they got teacher written corrective feedback on their paper. The first summary was used as the pre-test and the last summary was used as the post-test in both groups. Writing score was determined by a holistic rating procedure that included content, organization, grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics. Results of the study showed that students in the experimental group who received collaborative summary writing outperformed the students in the control group in summary writing. In addition, it was observed that students’ writing ability improved significantly in terms of content, organization, and vocabulary, but not for grammar or mechanics. At the end, a number of theoretical and pedagogical implications for further research have been presented.
Keywords: EFL, Collaboration, Summary Writing, Writing Development
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- Introduction
Writing is considered as one of the most important skills particularly in an academic setting. Although writing can be an enjoyable and a creative activity, the way it is taught in Iran has made it the most difficult skill to be acquired and it is a skill students like the least. There are many ways to consider the concept of writing. Authors like Goodman and Hudelson (as cited in Ruíz, 2004) defines it “as an instrument of communication that mediates personal and social learning among human beings” (p. 130). Goodman (as cited in Clavijo, 2007) states that reading and writing need to deal with the personal history of each individual, his or her culture and his or her social environment. That is why we have to devote enough time to develop this skill in our students, as not all of them share the same background. When students are not used to reading and writing, we cannot expect that they will produce texts and master their writing skills without appropriate instruction.
Lombana (2002) claims that this skill is the most difficult to master in any language and especially when learning a new one because it needs aspects such as linguistic knowledge, cognitive and socio cultural aspects (discourse and sociolinguistic features) to convey meaning, while writing influences each person’s abilities which need the practice and reflection of a spoken language. Salmon (as cited in Galvis, 2004) shares the previous idea since he believes that the development of the writing skill requires practice and it is the cause of a social environment, cognitive development and psycholinguistic processes.
Therefore, we can define writing more than a skill but rather a means that helps individuals to communicate according to what influences their lives. Nonetheless, it is expected to be used formally if we write for academic purposes/at a university level. The importance of academic writing is due to our students’ necessity to be part of a very competitive world in which people with excellent competence in all areas of the language have better opportunities. Because of globalization, many companies require their employees to use oral and written English proficiently. Moreover, most universities demand that their students take and pass international exams with a high score and this includes the ability to write academically.
Thus, we highlighted what Brian (2010) points out: “Academic writing is essential for growth and development of important skills to be able to lead a successful life after the completion of studies” (p. 1). Similarly, Rodríguez (2004) noted that academic writing is focuses on higher education students. As a result, it has a definite audience such as teachers and students from the academic community. In this study I focus on Rodríguez (2004)definition of academic writing as formal writing that implies great effort to construct coherent and well argumentative texts whose production is difficult for the writer, but easier for the reader. Jordan (2001 as cited in Rodríguez, 2004) states that “Academic writing includes a range of approaches that requires various techniques for training students as writers” (p. 19). We can connect this quote to the previous idea in the sense that certainly we need to work on academic writing to bridge the gap we have had between writing and other skills in English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching. We also have to become familiar with those techniques in order to train ourselves on how to teach writing at a higher level and assure students succeed in this skill.
For this study, I followed the principles of academic writing presented by Montero (2005); those principles include brainstorming, organizing, outlining, editing drafts, and reaching a consensus on the final product. It is worth mentioning that different authors in the field of academic writing like Keenan and Pavlik (1990) present these principles but give them different names. In synthesis, academic writing involves not only form and function but also rhetoric, which is the ability to use language effectively. This study is based on the “non- linear, exploratory, and generative process whereby writers discover and reformulate their ideas as they attempt to approximate meaning” (Zamel as cited in Ariza, 2005, p. 38). Therefore, it is believed that there should be a balance between content and form though what really counts is to trigger the written language ability in learners. This will help the learners grow academically and professionally in addition to providing them with an opportunity to experience peer collaboration.
- Literature Review
Among the different genres of writing students have to undertake during the course of their academic career, summary writing seems to be one of the most difficult to master. Summary writing also can help learners to improve all four language skills. Although summarizing is a complex activity that needs an overwhelming cognitive load on students is a highly essential and necessary skill in an academic setting (Kirkland, 1991). Collaborative writing emphasizes interactive teaching and learning unlike the more traditional teacher-dominant classroom. Furthermore, Collaborative writing has great potential as a pedagogical approach, as research has shown that it encourages reflective thinking and a pooling of knowledge about language (Elola, 2012). From a sociocultural perspective, collaboration affords learners to engage in scaffolding, where they are able to guide each other through the complex process of linguistic problem solving (Donato, 1994). In collaborate summary writing, learners use language to make meaning and to deliberate about the best way to articulate that meaning (Swain, 2000).
Summary writing has been identified as a highly important and essential skill not only in language learning, but also in most areas of a student’s academic issues. It is a highly useful and complicated skill, related to both reading and writing, contributes to academic success, and promotes thinking by forcing students to articulate ideas (Bean, 1986). However, Messer (1997) mentions that summary writing is a skill which is difficult to teach, learn and evaluate. Some of the factors affecting successful writing performance, in particular, in summary writing include L2 proficiency, content schemata, affect, formal schemata, cognitive skills, and meta-cognitive skills (Kirkland, 1991).
Summarizing in the past was considered as plagiarism since L2 learners tend to copy from source texts (Chen & Su, 2011). In addition, Nambiar (2007) claims that summarizing is a difficult and cognitively demanding task. It is not an easy skill to acquire because it involves the ability to reconceptualize material, in which the learner has to be able to move from the specific and local to the general or macro. In addition, they have to present the information they have gathered in a clear and concise manner.
Second language research on summarizing skills has largely focused on the reading component, denying the writing component (Messer, 1997). Though studies on reading comprehension are important, the output component where learners have to combine their dialectical, organizational and linguistic skills in producing a piece of written summary is also significant. Because of the difficulties in the learning and teaching of summary writing in ESL classrooms, it is thus important to examine approaches to teaching and learning the skill. Collaborative writing, which has been found to have encouraging effects on students’ ESL writing (Storch, 2005; Wigglesworth & Storch, 2009; Shehadeh, 2012), may possibly be a viable approach in the teaching of summary skills. However, few studies have been conducted on using collaborative summary writing, specifically in the context of the Iranian EFL classroom. Here are some research results related to collaborative summary writing.
Norisma et al (1997) found that students generally used the copy-delete strategy in summarizing whereby they copied sentences from the source text. Another finding was that the participants resorted to the sentence-combination strategy and used incorrect conjunction words to join the sentences. The researchers inferred that most of the students had failed to use the summarization rules effectively and concluded that the students were weak at summary writing. In another study Othman (2009) found that the teachers reported on students’ inability to differentiate between main ideas and supporting ideas in the summary text. The students also had difficulty in using their own words in writing their summaries. These limitations were further compounded by the large class sizes and the emphasis on exams which served as barriers to the teachers in providing adequate feedback to students.
As a whole, summary writing in ESL classrooms is an important task to examine approaches to teaching and learning the skill. Collaborative writing has been found to have encouraging and positive effects on students’ ESL writing (Ballester & Cabello, 2016; Handayani, 2012; Sajedi, 2014; Shehadeh, 2012). It seems that collaborative summary writing may possibly be a viable approach in the teaching of writing skills. Collaborative summary writing as a collaborator produces a shared document by engaging in substantial interaction and sharing decision-making power and responsibility for it. It is performed collectively by more than one person to produce a single text and writing is any activity that leads to a completed document, including idea generating, researching, planning and organizing, drafting, revising, and editing. Collaborative writing is an iterative and social process that involves a group focused on a common objective that negotiates, coordinates, and communicates during the creation of a common document (Lowry et al., 2004) through mutual interactions, shared expertise and joint decision-making throughout the whole process (Yong, 2006).
Collaborative writing is related to Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory, where social interaction is an integral component of learning. An aspect of this theory relevant to collaborative writing is the concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) where group members use mediational means collaboratively to create, obtain, and communicate meaning (Moll, 1989). Scaffolding is a construct related to ZPD and the Vygotskian theory of learning as a socially constructed process. Donato (1994) notes that the learners were individually novices but collectively experts guiding each other through the complex process of linguistic problem solving. By collaborating with each other in creating and communicating meaning, learners are able to engage in the learning process.
Collaborative writing refers to the process which provides participants the opportunity to explore, discuss, cooperate and develop learning capabilities (Dobao, 2012). Vygotsky argued that “social interaction precedes development; consciousness and cognition are the end product of socialization and social behavior” (Heidar, 2016). The foundation of collaborative writing was built on this Vygotskian notion of having to cooperate with others by contributing ideas in order for quality learning and growth to take place (Heidar, 2016). With the advancement of technology, teaching writing to students has also evolved with time. Technology and writing have been fused together to further provide an opportunity for learning, interactive and cognitive development among students to take place (Noël & Robert, 2004; Tar, Varga & Wiwczaroski, 2009). Thus, it would be useful to examine the evolution of collaborative writing over the past ten years, and hopefully discover on how it can be further developed in years to come in the hopes of enriching both teaching and learning experiences.
Some studies were conducted to examine the usage of technology with collaborative writing (Calvo et al., 2011; Erkens, Jaspers, Prangsma, & Kanselaar, 2005; Hadjerrouit, 2014; Li, 2015). These studies have suggested that technologically mediated tools, such as wikis and blogs, could be used as potentially powerful means to foster collaborative writing by drawing upon the interactions and contributions of the participants through the history function, in order to measure the value of using technology with collaborative writing tasks (Erkens, Jaspers, Prangsma, & Kanselaar, 2005; Gress, Fior, Hadwin, & Winne, 2010; Hadjerrouit, 2014; Li, 2015).
Some studies were also conducted to measure the effect and development of collaborative writing and computer-supported collaborative writing on participants’ performance (Dobao, 2012). In fact, most of the results have shown that the quality of work is better when completed in groups or pairs. The feedback received from students was generally positive, with most students feeling affirmative about collaborative writing tasks. Therefore, these research studies suggest that the design of the collaborative writing task is important in order to provide the maximum learning opportunity for the participants (Wang, 2009).
The focus of these earlier works was mostly on the impacts and effectiveness of collaborative writing on its participants rather than looking at how collaborative writing tasks could be further developed and enhanced with the help of tasks. There was little exploration in using tasks. Furthermore, with the continuing interest in this topic from diverse perspectives, it is useful to try to use the available empirical research and attempt to explicate the impacts and effectiveness of collaborative writing.
To sum up, the purpose of this research paper is to extend the previous and current knowledge on this topic by uncovering how collaborative writing has developed over the recent years. Most teacher-researchers state that in reality, collaborative writing means that the student teams up with one or more peers to go through the writing process. I agree with this statement and, in addition to this, I have to mention that collaborative writing in class is a way to prepare students for future assignments where team abilities are required. Widdowson (as cited in Montero, 2005) points out that when students work together they are dialoguing and making decisions due to constant feedback. The classroom technique of collaborative learning of writing skills is strongly advised in this study where students must be the center of the class and interact as much as possible with their classmates. English teachers are also required to encourage peer and self-correction. “Collaborative writing presents not only a highly motivating learning experience for EFL/ESL students, but also a creative pedagogical tool for teachers” (Montero, 2005, p. 38). According to this author, who carried out this approach using poems in a university in Panama, the benefits are numerous: It promotes individual participation, increases self-confidence, encourages productivity, and makes the activities fun. Taking advantage of these benefits, written-project work was used in the intervention to collect data. Projects are descriptions and accounts of students’ production using different skills.
Burke (1993) states that projects can be an individual or group assignments on a topic related to the curriculum which will trigger creativity and create problem solving skills. Besides, this sort of activity provides opportunities for students to collaborate, interact, negotiate, learn, and enjoy in an EFL setting, especially in this context where people were used to working individually.
According to Cárdenas (2006), project works strive for learners’ autonomy, self –monitoring and a capacity for responsible social action. Written projects need to be exploited and implemented as a part of the curriculum if teachers want students to succeed in this skill and if teachers want a challenge to their methodology and resourceful capability.
In this setting, projects are almost always oral presentations gradually developed in class and linked to the aims of a lesson. Taking advantage of our students’ need to write, I decided to implement a written component with the kind of project students develop at the university. With collaborative writing through project work I planned to follow Freire’s (1970) philosophy of transformation from critical pedagogy, accounting for students’ opinions due to the fact that in this study free opinion was encouraged.
Collaborative writing can be beneficial in different language domains. For instance, Swain (1995) proposed the use of collaborative writing tasks to direct students’ attention to grammatical accuracy. Kuiken and Vedder (2002) found that there was a significantly strong relationship between interaction among writers on metalinguistic awareness and text quality in L2 since contemplating and discussing language forms, content, and the writing-rewriting process can work as consciousness-raising mechanisms that lead writers to notice the existing gaps in their language repertoire. However, Shehadeh (2011) did not find any significant effect of summary writing on grammar and mechanics.
- Method
3.1Participants
The participants of the current study were 60 EFL students studying in English Institute in Tabriz who were passing essay writing course. This study consists of two intact groups one of them was assigned as a control group and the other one as an experimental group. Their age ranged between 18 and 24.
3.2Procedure
To select homogeneous participants for the current study a modified TOEFL test from (LOngman TOEFL Preparation Book) was administered. This test contained 50 items. This test consisted of reading comprehension (20 items in forms of Multiple-choice items), grammar (27 items in the form of multiple choice), and writing (3tems including three topics for writing) for homogenizing their language proficiency. The allocated time for answering the questions was 1 hour. After correcting the papers, 40 students were selected as the advanced learners out of 58 students. The score for the proficiency test was out of 100.
The English course for essay writing consisted of 3 hours per week that lasted 16 sessions. The syllabus included 16 units of reading passages that were followed by some comprehension questions (from the How to write essays in TOEFL book for upper intermediate levels). The syllabus required students to write a summary of the taught unit in the classroom
Collaboratively in pairs or in groups. Teacher tried to check their comprehension of the texts. Then they were asked to write the summary. Throughout the course, there were 16 summary writing tasks. The first summary from the first lesson was used as the pre-test. The last summary in the sixteenth session was used as the post-test. Two trained raters evaluated the summaries. The written performance was assessed based on Hughes (2005) scale. This scale consisted of content, organization, grammar, vocabulary and mechanics of the writings which was scores from 0-6. The whole of the score for this scale was out of 30.
The inter-rater reliability was found to be 0.79 for the pre-test and for the post-test was 0.85. In the first session of the course, the teacher instructed the students about how to write a summary in English since summary writing is a method used by the teacher to find out if a student has understood what has been read. Afterwards, the teacher asked students to read the passages and be sure that they could understand it. Then, the students were supposed to focus on the topic, main ideas and important details. Then, they were asked to paraphrase the original sentences. They should avoid copying the original sentences. Each session was dedicated to the teaching of reading passage, vocabulary items and grammar points, and students had 25 minutes to write their summaries in the classroom. In this case, teachers would be sure they have written the summaries themselves without cheating or coping from somewhere. Students were encouraged to paraphrase the sentences by changing the words and writing their equivalents in English or using different grammatical structure. The summaries were scored and returned back to the students the next session. Teacher and students discussed about the feedback and their errors in the written task. In the control group, on the other hand, students passed the same procedure. Unless, they wrote their summaries at home and they did not have collaborative activity. They just received teacher written error correction for their writing task and there was not any discussion part after that.
- Results and Discussion
Table 1
Independent sample t-test for Proficiency test
| group | N | mean | Std. Deviation | Std. Error Mean | Sig(2-tailed) | F | t | df |
| TOEFL control | 30 | 66.75 | .01150 | .02235 | .840 | 1.783 | -.234 | 58
57.217 |
| experimental | 30 | 68.61 | .07624 | .04377 | .840 | -.234 |
As Table 1 shows, scores in the proficiency test for the control group are (M =66.75, SD =.011) and experimental group (M=68.61 SD =.076), t (58) =-.234, P>.05. The mean score shows that two groups in the beginning of the study were homogeneous.
Table 2
Pearson Correlation of EFL learners’ writing scores in two groups in the pre and post tests conducted by two raters
|
|
Rater1 | Rater2 |
| Pre-test Pearson correlation
Sig.(2-tailed) Rater1 N |
1.000
. 30 |
.794**
.000 30 |
| Rater2 Pearson correlation
Sig.(2-tailed) N |
.794**
.000 30 |
1.000
. 30 |
| Female(mot) | Achievement | |
| Post-test Pearson correlation
Sig.(2-tailed) Rater1 N |
1.000
. 30 |
.854**
.000 30 |
| Rater2 Pearson correlation
Sig.(2-tailed) N |
.854**
.000 30 |
1.000
. 30 |
The inter-rater reliability was found to be 0.79 for the pre-test and for the post-test was 0.85.According to the Table 2, there is a positive correlation between two raters in assessing the results of students written performance.
Table 3
Independent sample t-test for summary writing task scores in the pre-test and the post-test
| group | N | mean | Std. Deviation | Std. Error Mean | Sig(2-tailed) | F | t | df |
| Pre control | 30 | 14.45 | .03150 | .02035 | .820 | 1.733 | -.254 | 58
57.217 |
| experimental | 30 | 15.61 | .07624 | .04777 | .820 | -.254 | ||
| Post control | 30 | 17.84 | .24583 | .01218 | .000 | 25.925 | -1.259 | 58
56.669 |
| experimental | 30 | 25.19 | .21576 | .03025 | .000 | -1.259 |
As Table 1 shows, scores in the pre-test for the control group are (M =14.45, SD =.031) and experimental group (M=15.61 SD =.076), t (38) =-.254, P>.05. The mean score shows that two groups writing in the pre-test were the same. In the post-test, scores for the control group (M =17.84, SD =.24) and the experimental group (M=25.19, SD = .21), t (38) = -1.259, P=.000. The results show that there is a significant difference between two groups in the post-test. In the post-test, the experimental group outperforms the control group in written performance. It shows that collaborative summary writing has improved the written performance.
Figure1. The Improvement of Writing performance in the Experimental Group
According to the results in Fig.1, students in the experimental group had improvements in the post-test. Organization, vocabulary and Content improved better than the other parts in the post-test. It seems that collaborative summary writing helps learners to notice to vocabulary and the usage of linking words in the sentence.
Collaborative summary writing tasks have facilitated writing skill. Collaborative writing is a powerful tool that could help make learning more engaging. Therefore, educators have been encouraged to use collaboration as part of their instruction. Studies on the usage of collaborative writing task have provided extensive descriptions on the effectiveness of using it to facilitate learning writing skill (Brodahl, Hadjerrouit, & Hansen, 2011; Calvo et al., 2011; Kessler, Bikowski, & Boggs, 2012), therefore collaborations through group discussions in classrooms has a facilitative role on learning writing skill. Some studies demonstrated that technology has enhanced collaborative writing tasks through the usage of a software that combines “a word processor, a chat facility, access to a private notepad and online information sources” (Ballard & Ballard, 2013; Hafner, 2013; Zhou, Simpson & Domizi, 2012). With the readily available resources like summarizing, educators are able to design a collaborative writing task for teaching and learning purposes. Some studies that investigated the effectiveness of collaborative writing through the usage of writing tasks have found that the quality of the students’ products are better when working in groups and while using summarizing to assist them improve their writing (Hadjerrouit, 2014; Li, 2015; Mcdonough & Sunitham, 2009; Miyazoe & Anderson, 2010; Warschauer, 2010).
When examining discussions in a group, researchers found that the collaborative environment has helped to redefine students’ ideas of ownership (Gress, Fior, Hadwin, & Winne, 2010; Li & Kim, 2016; Morton-Standish, 2014). Using collaborative summarizing, could help build students’ authorial presence as they allow for a large number of collaborators to contribute and work together, share ideas and clarify thoughts (Kessler, 2009; Onrubia & Engel, 2009; Wollscheid, Sjaastad, Tomte & Lover, 2016), resulting an increase in critical thinking throughout the collaborative writing process (Suwantarathip &Wichadee, 2014; Teow, 2014; Wheeler, Yeomans & Wheeler, 2008). This, however, is dependent on the task instructions as some studies highlighted that the usage of summarizing with collaborative writing could dampen the performance of the students. Hence, it is crucial for collaborative writing participants to be able to use their critical thinking skills throughout the writing process (Kessler, Bikowski & Boggs, 2012; Campbell & Pullinger, 2013; Teow, 2014).
Students should practice such critical thinking when doing reading. In summary, collaborative summary writing studies have demonstrated that collaborative writing environment that incorporates critical thinking instruction has improved students’ thinking skills and literacy. Students’ group discussions will also be developed towards higher levels of interaction with debates and clarifications made throughout the writing process (Aydin & Yildiz, 2014; Kavaliauskiene, 2010; Mak & Coniam, 2008), suggesting that writing has been facilitated through collaborative summary writing tasks.
Nonetheless, the task is only successful if there is an effective blend of adaptive instruction, which offers not only summarizing to be used as a platform for collaborative writing, but also opportunities for critical thinking-infused collaborative writing activities that can potentially foster both critical thinking skills and literacy outcomes (Chong, Tan, & Mardziah, 2011; King, 2015, Kuteeva, 2011; Yang, Gamble, Hung, & Lin, 2014).
Summarizing tasks through collaboration improved learners writing skill. It can be said that most students are motivated by an improvement in their writing competencies in collaborative writing tasks. Some studies over the recent years have suggested that students are motivated by an improvement in their writing competencies in collaborative writing. Motivation, in this context, refers to student’s affective behavior and reaction towards the improved quality of their product. In fact, the majority of the studies pointed out that students felt motivated after participating in collaborative writing because the products that were created surpassed their expectations (Dobao & Blum, 2013; Ong & Maarof, 2013; Chen, Xie, & Looi, 2012). Students who worked in collaborative groups also reported being more satisfied with their classes and with their performance (Ong & Maarof, 2013). Many students found that the interaction that they had with their peers, especially during feedback and editing, helped them see the importance of improving their pieces. This made them motivated to apply the same set of skills to their individual work (Dobao, 2012; Ong & Maarof, 2013).Studies have also found that the products of collaborative writing have demonstrated the recommended quality of work, making this another factor as to why students are more motivated after collaborative writing tasks. When working in groups, students generally produce shorter but better texts in terms of task fulfillment, grammatical accuracy, and complexity (Prinsen, Volman, Terwel, & van den Eeden, 2009; Shehadeh, 2011; Yeh, 2014), as collaboration gave students the opportunity to gather ideas and provide each other with feedback. Studies have also found that students tend to be more positive and open to collaborative writing tasks as it could help them with language learning. This was indicated in a number of studies where students declared that collaborative writing was useful in helping them to improve their grammatical accuracy and vocabulary acquisition (Dobao, 2014; Prinsen, Volman, Terwel, & van den Eeden, 2009; Shehadeh, 2011; Yeh, 2014).
In particular, peer feedback can improve the quantity and quality of peer talk, and increase student interaction and negotiation in the writing process. Students also thought that, while discussing and interacting with their group members and with the support and guidance from their teacher, they improved their English vocabulary, gained new ideas and perspectives, and enhanced their learning about text coherence. All of which led to improvement in their writing competencies, as indicated by students’ assessed writing performance (Storch, 2005; Ong & Maarof, 2013). In short, the above studies have shown that students are motivated by an improvement in their writing competencies in collaborative writing. When it comes to improving grammatical accuracy, students stated that it is easier to correct other people’s errors than their own (Dobao, 2012; Yeh, 2014). Hence, providing students the opportunity to learn skills, such as the “critical editing eye”, which in return may be useful, beneficial and applicable for use in individuals writing in the future.
It can be said that Collaborative writing is effective in improving accuracy of student writing and critical thinking. Over the recent years, some studies have documented the effectiveness of collaborative writing in applying linguistic knowledge, such as grammar, text coherence and cohesion, in writing (Chittooran, 2015; Dobao, 2012, 2014; Dowse & van Rensburg, 2015; Nixon & McClay, 2007; Sajedi, 2014). Some studies have also documented collaborative writing has helped improve students’ writing quality in terms of content, organization, grammar and vocabulary (Dobao, 2012, 2014; Dowse & van Rensburg, 2015). Some studies found that there are no differences in terms of fluency and complexity, but the texts written in groups/pairs were significantly more accurate than those written individually (Nixon & McClay, 2007). The above studies suggest that collaborative writing helps improve students’ work through the process of collaboration and interaction. In addition, studies have also shown that collaborative writing have helped students improve in academic achievement and test scores, higher-level thinking skills, and critical thinking (Neumann & McDonough, 2015; Tar, Varga, & Wiwczaroski, 2009; Wong, Lin, Sung, & Lin, 2011).
Moreover, studies found that collaboration with peers has been found to promote critical reflection and thinking among college students (Tar, Varga & Wiwczaroski, 2009). Therefore, studies with secondary students found that engagement with peers encouraged thought provoking activities including honest dialoguing and questioning. This collaborative writing process known as the negotiation process promoted active reflection (Latawiec, Anderson, Ma, & Nguyen-Jahiel, 2016). Collaborative writing has helped to foster language learning and writing conventions development (Silby & Watts, 2015; Suzuki, 2008, Wette, 2014). Through collaborative writing, students are “impelled to make decisions about the language needed to express their ideas, and thus to formulate the structure in which to express those ideas as they produce a text together” (Suzuki, 2008).
To sum up, collaborative writing and its interaction feature provide learners with opportunities to use language, and to reflect on their own language use (Nosratinia & Nikpanjeh, 2015; Suzuki, 2008). Through the act of writing collaboratively, learners engage in a dialogue that encourages them to notice gaps in their L2 production and to test assumptions regarding language and literacy acquisition. All these can help improve accuracy of student writing and sharpen their critical thinking skills.
- Conclusion and Implications
The results of this study reveals that the experimental group who used collaborative writing summary could improve their writing skill. It can be concluded that while working in peer-review tasks, it is obligatory that learners be provided with guidelines that clearly indicate what and how to edit assignments completed outside of the classroom. Instructors should also consider in-class and out of class peer-review tasks. In addition, Instructors’ teaching practices play an important role in improving students’ writing abilities. Students’ attitudes towards peer-review tasks will become more positive when changes are made to facilitate the review process (Pardo-Ballester & Cabello, 2016). The findings of this study are in line with (Lina & Maarof, 2013; Sajedi, 2014; Shehadeh, 2012; swain, 2000) who found collaborative summary writing can enhance students’ written performance. Findings from this study suggest that further research is needed in the area of L2 collaborative summary writing and its effect on different genders with different language proficiency.
Research and empirical studies on collaborative writing have generally been very supportive of its use in the ESL classroom. Like this study, a vast number of past studies examining students’ perceptions of collaborative writing had similarly positive responses. The findings of the many studies suggest varied advantages of collaborative writing, be it in terms of communicative skill, language proficiency, construction of knowledge, or assessment of written work.
However, much Iranian-based research has not been conducted to investigate the effects of collaborative writing on students’ writing performance, nor to examine in depth and detail students’ perceptions and the problems experienced in collaborative writing. To date, studies on collaborative writing in summary writing are scarce, the latter a highly difficult yet essential skill in academic contexts. This study elicited students ‘perceptions of using collaborative writing to write summaries. Understanding learners’ views enables teachers to tailor writing activities according to students’ needs and to prepare students well before initiating any collaborative activities.
In present day classroom, educational needs and approaches are changing and educators need to explore various approaches, methods and pedagogies to address these changing needs in their teaching and learning. Implementing a collaborative environment in the writing classroom (as opposed to mere group work) is not without its challenges. Factors such as class size, time constraints, and teachers’ ability to facilitate and guide students in the process of collaborative summary writing are some of the concerns that would need to be addressed. A needs analysis and research on teacher training programs using the collaborative approach to summary writing should be conducted before any changes in their pedagogical practice is to be applied. Research on collaborative models of teaching writing could be disseminated to schools to foster awareness of this approach.
Although collaborative writing may not be likely to yield immediate results and transform learners into great writers, the benefits and advantages of this approach to general learning have been shown in numerous past studies. In view of the lack of interest and ability in the writing skill of the majority of Iranian students today, a more interactive pedagogy utilizing the collaborative approach is a viable alternative to the traditional method of teaching summary writing.
The research synthesized above suggest that collaborative writing can be further facilitated through the use of summarizing; most students are motivated by an improvement in their writing competencies in collaborative writing tasks; and collaborative writing is effective in improving accuracy of student writing and critical thinking. Some studies have shown that the use of collaborative summary writing tasks has helped to enhance student writing abilities. This finding can be considered consistent with Gan’s (2015) insights that writing tasks are important tools to enhance the educational experience of students and their collaborative writing curve. Collaborative writing has helped to foster critical thinking skills of the participants. Findings have shown that collaborative writing may motivate students to develop their writing skills.
However, the proficiency of the language plays a significant role in the success of collaborative writing on its participants (Wong, Chai, Aw, & King, 2015). This was demonstrated in studies where language teachers agree that the students’ proficiency in the language of instruction is important in order for the students to be motivated during and after their collaborative writing tasks (Kozuh, et al., 2015; Wong, Chai, Aw, & King, 2015). In fact, research has shown that students tend to be more motivated when working in their first language as the language of instruction, compared to working with their second language (Shehadeh, 2011; Storch, 2005).
Some research may not support the argument that collaborative writing could help students to be motivated in developing their writing skills. For example, English as second language (ESL) students may face difficulties when writing collaboratively. This in turn may affect their level of motivation and success of the collaborative writing tasks (Dobao, 2012; Shehadeh, 2011). Their lack of proficiency might silence them and their contribution to the writing task at hand. This may offset the advantages of collaborative writing tasks as the tasks are aimed at helping students acquire the academic communicative competencies and skills that they need through interactions in order to achieve success in writing (Manathunga & Hernandez-Leo, 2015; Prinsen, Volman, Terwel, & van den Eeden, 2009; Shehadeh, 2011). In fact, some research studies suggest that students do not appreciate writing together. They are not motivated to participate in collaborative writing tasks because of continued disagreements and member incompatibility (Bremner, 2010; Meyer, 2014). Teamwork plays an important role in the success of collaborative writing. Most participants commented that it is difficult to work with people that they are not familiar with. This point is demonstrated in some studies where the products from the group of friends are of a better quality than the group of different familiarity levels (Meyer, 2014).
On the other hand, research also shows that the success of collaborative writing is dependent on the responsibility that each student takes on (Spector et al., 2016). Despite being friends, some participants felt that there could be complacency when writing with friends, as people tended to be too comfortable and avoid responsibility causing others to take up more work and more responsibilities (Meyer, 2014). Findings have also shown that both higher-proficiency learners and lower-proficiency learners benefit from collaborative writing experience (Rardin & Moan, 1971; Weinstein & Bearison, 1985). Research has shown that students with lower English proficiency managed to focus mostly on vocabulary and grammar while composing their texts; students with higher English proficiency focused more on cohesion, content, and rhetoric (Elola & Oskoz, 2010; Wang, 2009). However, when they are mixed into groups of different proficiency levels, students of the lower proficiency are able to manage and learn organizational skills from their peers with higher proficiency (Naghdipour, 2016; Yang, 2014; Yeh, 2014).
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