Collaborative writing in the EFL Secondary Education classroom: comparing group, pair and individual work

Abstract

This study investigates the benefits of collaborative writing (CW) tasks in a 1st 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. However, papers about it in Spanish Secondary Education classes are scarce. Moreover, most CW published studies have compared individuals and pairs CW outcomes. This study is a partial replication of Fernández Dobao’s (2012) paper, in which I analyse students’ accuracy, fluency and syntactic complexity outcomes when writing the same text individually (n=18), in pairs (n=10) and in small groups (n=7). 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. Limitations of the study and its pedagogical implications are discussed.