Publication:

Collaborative writing among young EFL learners in a school context: product and process

The recent surge in studies on collaborative writing (CW) has providedvaluable insights into the product and process of writing. When writingtogether, adults tend to produce better texts and generate and resolvea large number of language-related episodes (LREs). Also, analyses ofthe dialogues of collaborative writers show that learners are able toco-construct knowledge and mainly focus their attention on thegeneration of ideas. As for young learners (YLs), the very few studiescomparing jointly and individually written texts have not identified anyadvantages in the use of collaboratively written drafts.Furthermore,while YLs also produce and resolve LREs in CW tasks, no study to datehas provided a thorough analysis of their dialogues. To address thesegaps, this study compares the products of primary school learners ofEnglish as a foreign language (EFL) aged 11–12 writing in pairs (n= 20)and individually (n= 19) and provides a thorough analysis of pair talk(process). Results suggest that collaborative writers produced moreaccurate texts and focused most of their efforts on the generation ofideas and on the discussion and successful resolution of LREs. In light ofthese results the implementation of CW with YLs is encouraged.