The Effects of Collaborative vs. Individual Work on EFL Written Texts: Aspects of Quality and Engagement

Abstract

This paper presents a study which analyses the effects of collaborative working in the quality of EFL students’ written text and in EFL students’ engagement when writing texts. This paper compares two sets of short stories written in English in class by fourth year secondary students (ages 15-17) at a public bilingual high school of Madrid, Spain. The present study included a total of 40 participants, 20 of whom worked individually and 20 of whom worked collaboratively in pairs. Participants were first taught some guidelines about how to write a short story. Then, each student/pair was asked to write one short story. A total of 30 short stories were collected (20 written individually and 10 written in pairs). The quality of EFL students’ written text was determined by a quantitative analysis that included organization, fluency, complexity and accuracy. Participants’ engagement when writing texts was determined by a small qualitative study based on observation during data collection. This paper concludes that that collaborative partner work has various positive implications for writing in the EFL classroom, especially in terms of organization, accuracy and EFL student’s engagement when written texts. Key words: teaching English as foreign language, collaborative writing, organization, fluency, complexity, accuracy, engagement.