The Effect Of Proficiency Pairing On Senior High School Students' Language Learning In Collaborative Writing

Collaborative writing involves two or more learnersjointly producinga text.The use of collaborative writing tasks has been demonstrated to facilitate second language(L2)learning through pushing learners to reflect on their language use(i.e.,produce “language-related episodes”)and share their individual resources to solve linguistic problems.The L2 proficiency of learners in any one class is often quite heterogeneous;therefore,there is a concern for instructors on how to pair the students.Some studies have attempted to examine the effect of proficiency on language learning in collaborative tasks by pairing learners with similar or different proficiency.However,most of the studies werecarried out in L2 context,and primarilyfocusedon adult learners.There have been fewempirical investigations into the application of collaborative writing in Chinese high school EFL classroom and how the proficiency of each dyad member affects their English language learning during collaborative writing process.The present study,making use of both qualitative and quantitative data,intended to investigate the effect of proficiency pairing on Chinese senior high school students' English language learning in collaborative writing.36 senior high school students participated in the study and they were allocated into three types of dyads(high-high,high-low and low-low)based on their relative English proficiency to complete the same collaborative writing task.There were a total of 18 dyads(6 dyads in each proficiency pairing).All dyads were also required to fill out a questionnaire after the task and finish a tailor-made dyad-specific test one week later.The transcriptions of the recorded pair talk were analyzed in terms of language-related episodes(LREs).The study examined the number,type and outcome of LREs arising during the task as well as each student's performance on the retention of LREs in theirtests.Questionnaire was used to supplement the data.Results indicated that collaborative writing promoted students' language learning.The students produced a great deal of LREs and retained them in tests.Furthermore,proficiency pairing greatly influenced learners' language learning.The L-L dyads produced the most LREs and the H-H dyads focused more on grammatical LREs,compared with the other two types of dyads.However,there was no statistically significant difference among the three types of dyads in the number and focus of LREs.As for the outcome of LREs,all three types of dyads correctly resolved the largest proportion of their LREs and left similar number of LREs unresolved.The L-L dyads incorrectly resolved the most LREs.The three types of dyads had remarkable differencesin the incorrect solution of LREs.With regard to their performanceson tests,i.e.,the retention of three outcomes of LREs,the H-H dyads performed best,particularly in terms of the retention of their correctly resolved LREs,while the L-L dyads retainedworst the three outcomes of LREs in tests.Overall,proficiency pairing might not always significantly affect the number and type of LREs,but it was quite important for the resolution of language-related problems and the retention of the co-construct language knowledge.Based on the results above,the present study showed the advantage of collaborative writing for Chinese senior high school students' English learning and the influence of proficiency pairing on their language learning.Despite some limitations,the present study may enrich related research in Chinese EFL context andenhance our understanding of collaborative writing and proficiency pairing.Italso offered some pedagogical implications on how to pair students to make advantage of the opportunities of language learning afforded by collaborative writing tasks or other collaborative tasks to most extent.