The Effects Of Emergent Leadership On Students’ Task Engagement In Collaborative Writing

Emergent leadership is a type of leadership that arises when a person is perceived as the most influential member in a group or organization,even without a formally assigned leader.While previous scholars in second language acquisition(SLA)have highlighted the importance of emergent leadership in language classrooms,there is a lack of research on how it affects students’ engagement in collaborative writing tasks.Using a social-cognitive perspective that takes into account learners’ physical,cognitive,social and emotional conditions,this study aims to explore the impact of emergent leadership on students’ multifaceted dimensions of task engagement in collaborative writing.Based on the purpose of the current study,there are four research questions to be addressed:(1)To what degree does emergent leadership influence students’ behavioural engagement in collaborative writing tasks?(2)To what degree does emergent leadership influence students’ cognitive engagement in collaborative writing tasks?(3)To what degree does emergent leadership influence students’ social engagement in collaborative writing tasks?(4)To what degree does emergent leadership influence students’ emotional engagement in collaborative writing tasks?To answer these questions,the present study took place in an English course at a Chinese comprehensive university,with 20 third-year non-English majors participating.The author of the thesis,who also served as the teaching assistant for the course,collected recordings of students’ classroom interactions during two collaborative writing tasks,along with their reflection journals after each task.Through data analysis,the study found that in both creative writing and word association writing tasks:1)The frequency of emergent leadership behaviors had a strongly significant positive impact on students’ behavioral engagement;2)The frequency of emergent leadership behaviors had a strongly significant positive impact on students’ cognitive engagement;3)The frequency of emergent leadership behaviors had a moderately to strongly significant positive impact on students’social engagement;4)With regard to emotional engagement,in high leadership groups,the leaders’ assistance and praises could boost group members’ confidence and motivation;however,for the majority of low leadership groups,due to the confusion about task completion steps and inability to coordinate disagreements,members experienced more negative emotions while writing collaboratively.Based on the findings above,this study proposes suggestions from both theoretical and pedagogical perspectives.It inspires future research focusing on the impact of emergent leadership on students’ task performance,and provides useful insights into how teachers can organize and manage collaborative writing tasks and cultivate students’leadership skills.