Tuyển tập Hội nghị Khoa học thường niên năm 2024. ISBN: 978-604-82-8175-5
550
IMPROVING STUDENTS’ WRITING SKILL THROUGH
COLLABORATIVE WRITING
Pham Thi Linh Thuy
Thuyloi University, email: thuyptl@tlu.edu.vn
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1. Students’ writing skill in english 1
& english 2 courses at thuyloi university
At Thuyloi university, English non-major
students have to complete two courses of
English which focuse on four English skills
at B1-level including writing skill. When
letting the students compose their essays
individually, the researcher noticed that a lot
of the students considered writing lessons a
boring and solitary experience. Therefore,
they did not have the motivation and chance
to learn writing effectively. Due to that
reason, the researcher would like to search
for an efective tool that creates more
opportunities for more student interactionin
writing lessons and motivate them to take
writing as an enjoyable experience as well as
enhance their writing performance.
Therefore, the researcher who is in the search
of applicable solution in teaching writing has
found out that collaborative writing (CW)
can be a great tool to improve the situation.
1.2. Collaborative writing
According to McLane (1990) and Nunan
(1989) writing is not only a cognitive but also
a social process in which students have to
employ different skills to make meaning and
serve for communicating purposes.
Collaborative writing (CW) was also
defined as "an interative and social process
that involves a team focused on a common
objective that negotiates, coordinates, and
communicates during the creation of a common
document" (Lowry et al., 2004, p. 72).
Haring-Smith (1994) and Storch (2005)
explained that collaborative writing is a
process participated by more than one
individual who generates a text together and
holds the co-constructing duty which is an
important factor of the activity.
Sharing the same ideas with Haring-Smith,
Rice, and Huguley (1994, pp. 163-164)
considered collaborative writing as a collective
performance which involves working out
ideas, making plans and outlines, drafting,
revising and agreeing on the final version.
It can be said that collaborative writing is
an activity that requires the participation of
pairs or groups in which members have their
co-authorship of creating the best final
written product.
Vygotsky (1978) emphasized the
importance of CW and claimed that young
writing learners have great chances to
effectively interact with their teachers and
classmates before writing by themselves.
Vygotsky (1978) also stressed that when
students with the support of their teacher
form a writing community, they become
more aware of their roles and responsibilites,
they profit from the criticism of their peers
and they learn to express their arguments.
2. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
This is a secondary research which involves
the summary, collation, synthesis and cititcal
review of existing research, books, and
articles on improving students’ writing
through collaborative writing.
The research aims to investigate and
answer two questions:
How can collaborate writing be carried
out?
Tuyển tập Hội nghị Khoa học thường niên năm 2024. ISBN: 978-604-82-8175-5
551
What are the benefnits of CW in
improving students' writing?
3. PROCESS OF C W
Hedge (2005, p. 51) stated that "the
process of writing contains number of
activities" and mentioned the main stages of
writing which consists of pre-writing,
drafting and re-drafting, and editing (Hedge,
2005, pp. 52-54). In detail, she described the
steps of writing in the figure below:
Figure 1. Process of writing (Hedge, 2005, p. 51)
Graham and Perin (2007, p. 16) summarized
the main steps of CW by saying:
"Collaborative writing involves developing
instructional arrangements whereby
adolescents work together to plan, draft, revise,
and edit their compositions". Furthermore,
Ghufron & Hawa (2015) proposed seven
detailed steps of CW: (1) students' forming
groups and brainstorming to generate ideas; (2)
group's making an outline; (3) group's dividing
the sub-task for each group member; (4)
group's editing the sub-tasks; (5) group's
combining the sub-tasks into a completed
product; (6) group's revising and editing and
(7) group's submitting their final product.
Basing on seven proposed detailed steps of
CW by Ghufron & Hawa (2015), Students at
Thuyloi University can practice writing
collaboratively through seven steps: (1)
students' forming groups by their choice; (2)
students' discussing and brainstorming ideas
for their essays; (3) students' making an
outline; (4) students' writing the first draft;
(5) students' revising and editing their first
draft; (6) students' writing their second draft
and (7) students' submitting their second draft
to their teacher. To ensure that students can
work collaboratively throughout the writing
process, students may work simultaneously
in all the steps above without dividing the
work to each member.
4. STRATEGIES OF C W
To organize CW groups, teachers can
employ one of three models which are called
"parallel, sequential and reciprocal" (Sharple,
1993, p. 14). These models are called "all-in-
parallel writing”, “each-in-sequence writing”
and “all-in-reaction writing" by Lingard
(2021, p.163). The three strategies are
described as follows:
In the parallel model or all-in-parallel
writing, each group member who is
responsible for a sub-section divided from
the whole document will work independently
at the same time and then submit his work to
the editor (Sharple, 1993; Lingard, 2021).
The demerits of this strategy are that when a
member cannot know what his teammate is
writing, he can produce ideas that overlap
other members' ones, so the members should
make a detailed outline before working on
their own (Lingard, 2021).
In the sequential model or each-in-sequence
writing, each member of a group is responsible
for a stage of writing, and a member writes the
next draft based on the products of the previous
stages (Sharple, 1993; Lingard, 2021). It is
stated that the disadvantages of this strategy are
the lack of interaction among members and the
low coherence of the ideas; therefore, this
strategy may only be suitable for members who
cannot have a regular meeting.
In the reciprocal model or all-in-reaction
writing, a writing task requires members of a
group to sit down together to work
simultaneously and jointly from the
beginning stage to the final stage of CW
(Sharple, 1993; Lingard, 2021). Because this
strategy may lead to unequal participation
among members, it should be applied in a
small group in which there is no dominance
from any members (Lingard, 2021)
From the researcher’s point of view, the
reciprocal strategy requires students to have
many discussions on an issue. When a
conflict happened, students could learn to
overcome it and negotiate to reach a final
consensus. Furthermore, with reciprocal
strategy, when discussing, students will
Tuyển tập Hội nghị Khoa học thường niên năm 2024. ISBN: 978-604-82-8175-5
552
involve in social negotiation in which they
need to consider other opposing views from
their peers, which may enhance their critical
thinking. Last but not least, the reciprocal
strategy allows students to give feedback and
learn from others in all stages of writing.
5. THE BENEFITS OF C W
One of the most striking benefits of CW is
that students can construct knowledge by
working with their peers (Bruffee, 1984;
Montero, 2005). Collaborative learning is
mutually beneficial for students and their peers.
When learning with others, students can not
only receive assistance and learn from their
peers, but they also can provide help and share
their understanding with others. When students
cannot generate ideas by themselves, they had
better consult his peers to get suggestions since
two heads are better than one. As a result, CW
helps students to learn from their interactions
with their peers and create better products. In
addition, CW limits the dominance of teacher
roles in classrooms (Bruffee, 1984).
Secondly, in a CW classroom, students are
stimulated to make decisions. Some areas of
writing that students are motivated to make
decisions on in CW activities are registers,
organization, and content of writing (Storch,
2005). In addition, Elbow (2000) pointed out
in his book that students often propose implicit
decisions when writing alone because they do
not need to explain the reasons for their
decisions to their peers. On the other hand,
"the process of writing with someone else
forces us to put many of these decisions into
words" (Elbow, 2000). Therefore, he regarded
CW as a process in which students are
motivated to be more rational and have more
chances to give an explanation for their choice.
CW offers many other benefits for
students. Montero (2005) mentioned other
benefits of CW that motivates students to be
more confident, active, generative, and
creative when having chances to work with
others. Furthermore, when experiencing CW
activities, students may not think writing is a
boring subject as they did before, but they
may consider writing as an entertaining and
exciting activity in which they are free to tell
their ideas. What is more, CW enhances the
feeling of co-authorship (Storch, 2005) which
requires each member to be responsible for
the joint writing. Finally, CW not only offers
advantages to students but also is useful for
teachers. Teachers can apply CW as a
creative technique alternating their traditional
teaching practice to create a new learning
environment in which students feel more
engaged (Montero, 2005).
6. CONCLUSION
Although CW proves many benefits to
improving students' writing products, teachers
are recommended anticipating the problems
likely to happen in class. The problems which
may happen in every collaborative lessons are
conflicts and unequal participation among
members. It is the job of the teachers to limit
these disadvantages to faliciate their students’
studying by preparation beforehand. The
researcher suggests that before applying CW
in class, students should be trained to manage
conflicts and equal participation by being
emphasized the importance of listening,
discussion negotiation and reaching the final
agreement. Moreover, it’s esential that a clear
and detailed checklist of criteria in the peer
editing should be given. Students are guided
through editing their peers' writing. Teachers
can show examples of how to give comments
based on each criterion in the peer editing
checklist to make sure students understand
how to give feedback properly.
7. REFERENCES
1. Brown, H. D. (2001). Teaching by Principles:
An Interactive Approach to Language
Pedagogy (2nd ed.). New-York: Longman.
2. Ghufron, M., & Hawa, M. (2015). The
effect of collaborative writing technique in
teaching argumentative essay writing
viewed from the students’ creativity.
Language Circle: Journal of Language and
Literature, 10(1). 49-60.