The Effect of Collaborative Writing Tasks on EFL University Students’ Writing Performance
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Abstract
In this study the effects of collaborative writing (CW) tasks were investigated on EFL university students’ writing performance by addressing two research objectives: (a) to examine if members’ contributions to CW tasks influence their writing performance in the final examination and (b) to find out among those with varied language proficiency levels who in the team contributed more texts during the CW processes. The participants were 115 students taking a writing course at a small private international university in central Thailand. Data were collected from students’ pre- and post-tests and the percentage of their contributions from two CW tasks—writing descriptive and argumentative essays. Paired sample t-test analysis showed that academic writing performance significantly increased after engaging in two CW tasks. Furthermore, the Pearson correlation coefficient (Pearson’s r) analysis showed that the percentage of learners’ text contributions during the CW processes was positively correlated with their post-writing in their final examination. The findings further revealed that students with higher language proficiency levels were prominent. Some implications for EFL writing contexts are discussed briefly.
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