Application Of Collaborative Writing To Higher Vocational English Writing Teaching

Junior College English Curriculum Standards for Vocational Education(2021)emphasizes the development of students’ ability to communicate in written English in workplace.Writing teaching is an important part of higher vocational English teaching.However,due to dated writing teaching methods,students’ poor English level and low writing interest,higher vocational English writing teaching is not effective.Recently,collaborative writing in which pairs or groups produce a text has attracted much attention.Previous studies affirmed the positive effects of collaborative writing,but have mainly applied it to junior and senior high schools and general universities.Based on Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory,Long’s interaction hypothesis and Swain’s output hypothesis,this study tested the effect of collaborative writing in higher vocational schools through three questions.(1)What are the effects of collaborative writing on higher vocational students’ English writing achievements?(2)What are the effects of collaborative writing on higher vocational students’ writing fluency,accuracy,and complexity?(3)What are higher vocational students’ attitudes and perceptions toward collaborative writing? Ninety-one students from two classes in a higher vocational school in Lanzhou were selected as research subjects.Before the experiment,two classes participated in the pre-test and were then randomly divided into the experimental class for collaborative writing and the control class for the product approach.After 12 weeks of writing teaching experiment,two classes conducted post-test and the experimental class conducted a questionnaire.The results show that collaborative writing has positive effects on higher vocational students’ writing achievements,fluency and accuracy,but no effects on complexity.The questionnaires reveal students hold positive attitudes toward collaborative writing and perceive it improves language proficiency and text quality,promote learning emotion and develop collaborative and thinking ability.This study provides a reference for the application of collaborative writing in higher vocational schools and some implications for higher vocational English writing teaching.