A Study On Renren Website-Mediated Online Cooperative EFL Writing

Writing is always the key and difficult spot of EFL teaching. With the arrival ofinformation age, the development of network technology supplies the EFL writing witha fully new view. This thesis attempts to apply Renren network platform to EFL writingof Chinese college postgraduate and construct a pluralized pedagogical model in EFLwriting under multimedia environment so as to improve their English writing skills.The research combines quantitative study and qualitative analysis.93first-yearpostgraduates from two EFL classes in Zhejiang University of Finance and Economicstake nine-month website-mediated online cooperative EFL writing through Renrensocial network. Through the analysis of students’ writing scores and surveys of pre-andpost-test, the author has found out that1) Renren website-mediated online cooperativeEFL writing could effectively improve learners’ English writing proficiency;2) learnershave become more positive toward EFL writing, peer review&teacher feedback, aswell as the new pattern of Renren website-mediated online EFL writing.The thesis comprises of seven parts as follows.The introduction presents some background information on network-mediated EFLwriting, the research significance, and the structure of the thesis respectively.Chapter one is the literature review which generally discusses the previous studieson network-mediated foreign language writing at home and aboard.In chapter two, the author discusses some fundamental background theories innetwork-mediated EFL writing, which includes zone of proximal development theory,collaborative learning theory, and process-focused approach theory.In chapter three, the author conducts a research on the efficiency of Chinesepostgraduate’s network-mediated EFL writing based on Renren website.Chapter four presents a detailed analysis on students’ pre-test and post-test writings, test scores, as well as their attitude variability toward online interactive EFL writingbased on Renren social network platform.In the conclusion, the author summarizes the results of the research and putforward recommendations for further studies.