Effects Of Collaborative Pre-writing Planning On English Writing Overall Quality, Fluency And Complexity

Alongside the increasing interests in English as a foreign language(EFL) writing, some researchers begin to investigate collaboration occurring only during pre-writing planning stage instead of collaborative writing in the whole writing process. Among those studies, more have explored the nature of learner interaction during pre-writing planning episode, whereas very few studies have investigated the effects of collaborative pre-writing planning on writing products. Theoretically, collaborative pre-structured tasks can more efficiently provide scaffolded assistance to each other, solve the problems encountered, and achieve a level of performance that is beyond their individual level of competence. The present study sets out to investigate the effects of collaborative pre-writing planning on EFL writing as well as students’ perceptions towards this approach. The study involves 60 sophomores of English majors in two intact classes at a university in northwestern China. The experimental class consists of 30 students, who are grouped into pairs to collaboratively finish the pre-structured planning tasks, and then are required to independently finish their own writing tasks; the other control class also consists of 30 students, who are required to individually finish the pre-structured planning tasks before they carry out their writing tasks. The study lasts eighteen weeks and involves a pre-test and a post-test. The quality of two types of writing tasks--the narrative essay and the illustrative essay--was measured by the overall score and two discourse features of language fluency and complexity. The study has found that pairs in the experimental group produce better texts in terms of the overall quality and complexity, while as to language fluency there is no significant difference between participants in the two groups. Besides, most students are positive about the experience, and feel it contributing to their English writing. This study reminds writing instructors to teach more than isolated composition skills, and instructors should provide learners an atmosphere where they can interact with each other and facilitate co-construction of knowledge. Besides, through a series of collaborative pre-writing planning activities students would be more confident and have enough writing sources to express in their future EFL writing. It is suggested that future study employee more precise measuring tools to evaluate the quality of written products.