Collaborative writing in the EFL Secondary Education classroom: Comparing triad, pair and individual work
Keywords:
Collaborative writing, individual work, pair work, triad work, Secondary EducationAbstract
This study investigates the benefits of collaborative writing (CW) tasks in a 1st of ESO setting. Based on strong socio-cognitive and communicative methodologies rationale, studies examining the benefits of CW use in Foreign Language (FL) learning are on the increase, but still scarce in Spanish Secondary Education classes. Moreover, most CW studies have compared the outcomes of individuals and pairs. Our study is a partial replication of Fernández Dobao’s (2012) paper, in which students’ accuracy, fluency and syntactic complexity outcomes when writing the same text individually (n=18), in pairs (n=20) and in triads (n=21) are analysed. Findings suggest CW and a higher number of participants in the collaboration generally benefit texts’ accuracy, fluency and syntactic complexity. However, individually written texts showed higher complexity via subordination than the ones written collaboratively.
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