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TEACHING COLLABORATIVE WRITING: A CLASSSROOM STUDY WITH

TURKISH ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE (EFL) STUDENTS

Conference Paper · July 2010

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 TEACHING COLLABORATIVE WRITING: A CLASSSROOM STUDY
WITH TURKISH ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE (EFL)
STUDENTS
Ali MERÇ
Anadolu University (TURKEY)
amerc@anadolu.edu.tr

Abstract
The teaching of writing skills in a communicative and systematic way is inevitable considering the fact
that students should be aware of the subject matters they learn and operate on while studying a
foreign language. In this study, two classroom applications in which a consciousness raising task was
implemented are presented with teacher and student reflections. The classroom applications mainly
focused on writing in a collaborative manner with 23 Turkish EFL learners. The classroom procedure
was videotaped and transcribed in order to reflect further on the experience. The results of the
classroom applications were satisfying enough to discuss the importance of noticing and collaborative
work in writing. Certain implications for teaching writing are also discussed.

Keywords: teaching writing skills, task-based language teaching, academic writing, action research.

1 INTRODUCTION
Writing is defined as “a process of communication which uses a conventional graphic system to
convey a message to a reader” (Lindemann 1982, p. 11). Considering this definition, the implication
for writing skills in a communicative and systematic way seems inevitable. Another important point in
teaching a foreign language as what certain scholars put forward is that students should be aware of
the subject matters they learn and operate on (Fotos 1993, Thornbury 1997, Willis 1996).
Conducting consciousness-raising activities in advanced writing classrooms has also been the
research interest of some studies on teaching writing (Clark & Ivanic 1991, Dyer 1996, Horowitz 1986,
Reppen 1994), and the findings of these studies endorsed the view that those activities supported the
learners’ learning positively. From the very low level students who are only supposed to write the
colors of the objects they see to the ones writing academic research papers, awareness raising
activities are believed to be advantageous and essential.
The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, it aims to give theoretical background about the process-
oriented approach to writing, academic writing courses, and consciousness raising tasks considering
the characteristics of the classrooms in which writing is taught at advance level. Second, two
classroom applications in which a consciousness raising task was implemented are presented with
teacher and student reflections. Certain implications for teaching writing will also be discussed.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW
In response to the aim of this paper, a theoretical background on process approach to writing, nature
of the academic writing courses, and consciousness raising tasks to teaching writing will be given.

2.1 Process approach to teaching writing

In the traditional writing classrooms, as what Leki (1992) stated, students are assigned
compositions or other kinds of texts to write. Most often in these classes the poor teacher takes
many student papers home at night and carefully marks all the grammatical and mechanical
errors in the writing. When the papers are returned to the students, often the students are asked
to take the paper home and correct all the errors and maybe recopy the text onto a clean sheet.
However, with the implementation of the process approach to teaching writing, many writing habits of
the learners have changed gradually. “The process oriented approach refers to a teaching approach
that focuses on the process a writer engages in when constructing meaning” (Montague 1995, p. 15).
Considering this definition, the writers are thought to be involving in the process of writing actively and
meaningfully. Moreover, the process writing has certain stages to be completed by the writersa
theoretical background on process approach to writing, nature of the academic writing courses, and
consciousness raising tasks to teaching writing.
Lindemann (1982) saw the ‘pre-writing’ stage as the “attempt to understand and solve the ‘problem’
the stimulus creates for us” (p. 24). Namely, this stage involves the brainstorming the ideas for writing
and organizing the mind to start writing. Then, the ‘writing’ stage is the composing process where the
brainstormed and organized ideas are put onto a sheet of paper. Last, the ‘rewriting’ stage includes
two types of adjustments: revising and editing. Revising stage constitutes correcting meaning-based
errors in the piece of writing whereas editing stage includes correcting the surface-level structure
errors.
The importance and advantages of process oriented approach have also been the research interest in
recent years. As Zamel (1982) stated, the students start to consider what they wrote than how they
wrote since the great importance is given to the content of the writing. Moreover, it was evident by the
research results that students implementing the process effectively were better writers (Raimes 1985).
Different from the advantages, some cautions for the use of process oriented approach were also
suggested. Montague (1995), for example, asserted that “in attempting to follow the principles of
process instruction, teachers generally refrain from overt error correction out of a fear of discouraging
fluency and voice (p. 6)”. In addition to this view on error correction, Heilenman (1991) saw the poor
side of the process oriented approach as its minimizing the role of students’ L1, in his words: “The
concerns of process-oriented writing, recursiveness, writing-to-know, and effectiveness vis-ā-vis
audience, are irrelevant” (p. 278).

2.2 Academic writing

In the classrooms where academic writing is taught whether theoretically or practically, students face
several problems influencing their perceptions and expectations negatively. Spack (1988) puts
forward:
“Until we collect more assignments, interview the teachers to learn the purposes of assigned
tasks, observe the courses in which the tasks are assigned., examine the resulting students
essays, and analyze the teacher responses to and evaluations of these papers, we cannot
truly understand the nature of the academic writing students are asked to produce” (p. 32).
Moreover, certain studies were conducted to determine the student expectations from academic
writing courses and reported benefits of them. Mohan & Au-Yeung Lo (1985) investigated the
perceptions of Chinese students for academic writing and they concluded that students’ writing habits
and problems were only the surface-level mechanical problems. They, in addition, strongly suggested
that students needed greater awareness for native literacy and experience to achieve in academic
writing in a second language. Similarly, Christison & Krahnke (1986) investigated how ESL learners
used their English in academic settings with 80 university students. As a result, “Students indicated
the importance in academic work of the receptive skills of reading and listening over the productive
skills of speaking and writing” (p. 61). The researchers asserted that the students be given as accurate
and productive activities as possible to use their second language outside the classroom, and produce
language both in written and oral forms.
Furthermore, specific writing skills the students needed was another research question for the
researchers. Leki & Carson (1994) investigated the needs of students in English for Academic
Purposes (EAP) writing instruction. They found that the students needed content skills, rhetorical
skills, and task management strategies more than mechanics and thinking skills.
In summary the academic writing courses were found to need more realistic awareness raising tasks
and student perceptions on academic writing revealed that they needed to produce language more
consciously.

2.3 Writing tasks in language classrooms

“Generally speaking, the academic writer’s task is not to create personal meaning, but to find,
organize, and present data according to fairly explicit instructions” (Horowitz, 1986, p.455). These
words put the nature of academic writing tasks in language classrooms. After analyzing 54 tasks for
academic purposes, Horowitz (1986) suggested three task types to be used in academic writing
courses: contextualization, sentence combining, and outline diagrams.
As another discussion point, Dyer (1996) discussed the variables affecting the writing quality
positively: “duration of the instruction, mode of instruction, and focus of instruction” (pp. 314-315). She
suggested three writing tasks which were implemented in a Japanese college for English writing
courses: criteria application where 14 students discuss on a student writing, peer editing where
students answer the questions on the given student essays, and inquiry where the students’ attention
is focused in order to deal with a problem to solve.
Moreover, certain studies supported the use of awareness raising tasks in writing classrooms (Clark &
Ivanic 1991, Reppen 1994, Silva, Leki & Carson,1997, Spack 1988). In relation with the very purpose
of this paper, Reppen’s (1994) words are enough to state the importance of awareness-raising
activities in writing classrooms:
The second concept focuses on increasing student awareness of how different ways of organizing
information in writing interacts with the purpose of the text. This is an important step in helping
students become more successful writers. By discussing features of different text types, students
learn the language needed to talk about texts, begin to understand how and why texts are
organized in certain ways, and are able to evaluate their own writing and participate in peer
editing sessions more effectively (p. 32).
In her study which suggests a genre-based approach to content writing instruction, she found that the
approach helped students gain valuable practice in writing and inside the process of writing. She also
suggested that genre analysis would cover a certain portion of the writing classrooms.
Similarly, Silva & Leki (1997) discussed the importance textual issues in writing as well as writing from
reading. They asserted, “The mainstream composition literature has carefully and repeatedly
considered the reciprocity of reading and writing, and many mainstream writing classes use readings
to stimulate writing” (p.13). They also indicated that second language classrooms could do the same
things as mainstream writing classes did.
In response with task-based academic writing courses, Spack (1998) offered preparing activities “in
which students can learn general inquiry strategies, rhetorical principles, and tasks that can transfer to
other course works” (pp. 40-41). She also asserted that the tasks which would focus on the process of
summarizing, paraphrasing, quoting could encourage students to understand the style and purpose of
the writers.
Furthermore, within the implementation of process approach in writing classrooms, consciousness-
raising activities have also gained importance. Clark & Ivanic (1991) investigated how critical
knowledge about language (consciousness) could contribute to the development of effective language
use. For operating the consciousness-raising tasks in process writing courses, they put a set of
components of the writing activities:
 Accumulating knowledge, opinions and feelings.
 Establishing goals and purposes.
 Analyzing the ‘assignment’
 Planning
 Drawing on familiarity with types of writing
 Considering constraints of time and space
 Making the neat copy
 Drafting
 Formulating your own ideas
 Revising
 Experiencing panic, pain and anguish
 Clarifying your commitment to your ideas
 Establishing your own identity as a writer
 Considering the reader
 Experiencing the pleasure and satisfaction
 Deciding how to take responsibility: whether to mask or declare your own position
 Putting your knowledge of the language to use and developing this knowledge (pp. 173-
174).
They also indicated the importance and value of consciousness-raising about the writing process in 11
aspects:
 1 It relieves anxieties about writing
2 It dispels misconceptions
3 It puts important aspects of writing on the agenda
4 It provides a framework for students to reflect on their own experience
5 It sets in motion a process of unlearning bad practices
6 It provides a backdrop for all future writing activities
7 It treats language as meaning in context
8 It leads into talking about HOW
9 It introduces terminology
10 It’s a catalyst for a student-driven syllabus
11 It helps learners become more self-assured, responsible and critical writers.
Based on the research results and considering the valuable effects of consciousness-raising in writing
classrooms, a task was put into operation in two writing classrooms.

3 DESCRIPTION OF THE ACTIVITY

In order to raise the consciousness of the academic writing course students on different essay types, a
classroom task was designed in which the students were supposed to work in groups. First of all, five
different students essays on five essay types were selected as Flower (1979) suggested that students
be made aware of the student genre. All essays consisted of five paragraphs: an introduction
paragraph, three developmental paragraphs, and a conclusion paragraph. Each paragraph from the
essays were cut out and five different essay types for each paragraph type were brought together (for
example, five introduction paragraphs on one paper). So, five kinds of worksheets were handed and
were labeled as Groups A, B, C, D, and E. Moreover, each paragraph in each handout was given the
numbers from 1 to 5, so all paragraphs could be attached to each other and form the whole essay.
The titles for each essay were also brought together on another handout.
The task was designed in a jigsaw principle organization. This way, students form groups for getting
the information and later they form new groups. In their new groups, certain information types come
together and form the whole information. The task, on the other hand, was able to give a chance to the
teachers to implement it in several ways. Using this task, students may be asked to write a certain
piece of paragraph, to write titles for either the paragraphs or the whole essays, to fill in the given gaps
like topic sentences, thesis statement etc. For the aim of our paper, only two of these options were
selected and implemented in two classrooms

4 THE PRIMARY CLASSROOM APPLICATION

The first implementation of the task prepared was on June, 11th. The classroom consisted of 20 first
year students at Anadolu University, Education Faculty, ELT Department who had been studying in
that department for eight months. Different from their other skill-based courses, their writing
classrooms were process-oriented essay-writing courses. For the first term, they learned how to form
paragraphs including topic sentences, supporting details, introduction paragraph types, conclusion,
etc. and wrote two essays. For the second term, they were asked to write four essays using process-
oriented approach.
The day when the task was conducted was the last classroom day for the students, so they were all
informed about six essay types: example essay, comparison & contrast essay, classification essay,
process analysis essay, cause & effect analysis essay, and argumentative essay. The task included
all types, but cause & effect analysis essay type.
Because of the unexpected mechanical problems, the lesson couldn’t be recorded, but at the end of
the task, students were asked to evaluate the task in terms of its advantages and disadvantages for
them. The students’ opinions will also be discussed.
For the application of the task, first, the students were asked to form groups of 5, and each group was
named as Group A, B, C, and D. Then, each student in the groups was given a number and they were
assigned to be responsible for the paragraphs that their numbers were equal with. The work for the
students to complete was to identify the type of the essay using the paragraphs they had with them by
discussing in their groups.
After certain amount of time, by making sure that everybody was ready, the students were asked to
form new groups considering their numbers given (1’s, 2’s, 3’s, 4’s, 5’s). At that time the students’ task
was to form the whole essay, and to find the missing parts in the essays. The students were all sure
that conclusion paragraphs were missing. Therefore, they were asked to write conclusion paragraphs
for their essays in their groups considering the components of a good conclusion paragraph.
When they were ready, students read the conclusion paragraphs they written in their groups. In the
end, in the last minutes of the class-time, in order to relax the students and provide them with
enjoyable minutes, they were asked to decide on titles for the full essays they had in their hands. They
put titles for the essays, and the titles were compared with the original ones as a whole class
discussion.
At the end of the lesson all students had the whole essays by filling the gaps and the original ones
together, and they were asked to evaluate the advantages-disadvantages of the task on a sheet of
paper and submit them to the classroom teacher without mentioning their manes on the papers.

4.1 Reflection
In order to reflect on the classroom application of the task, the teacher’s ideas and the students’
written evaluations about the tasks were used.
First, I, as the classroom teacher, think that the task was quite beneficial for those first year students
who studied writing essays during the whole year since it gave them the chance to see all the essay
types in one task. Moreover, they were asked to work in two different groups in each of which they had
different roles to complete the group’s work. It gave them certain responsibilities and they experienced
the advantages of working in groups. They were also able to see how their group members could
benefit from the information they had to come to a group decision. Furthermore, they were able to
form conclusion paragraphs and had the opportunity to review the components of a good conclusion
paragraph. Finally, it was quite enjoyable for them to put titles for the essays they completed which
were not so demanding, and it was real fun for them to compare them with the original titles.
From the students’ points of view the task implemented was also beneficial as they stated. Most of the
students saw that activity as useful for getting prepared for their final exams in which they were
supposed to write an essay since the task gave them the opportunity to review all essay types. They
also stated the advantages of group work jigsaw principle in the formation of the groups which was an
application they weren’t accustomed to doing. The most important evaluation by the students was that
they indicated the necessity of conducting this kind of activities all over the term in order to review the
essay types they learned. One of the students’ evaluation about the task implemented was as follows
in his/her own words:
By the help of the exercises that we have done in the first lesson, I restated my lacks about
the details in writing and while evaluating a paragraph. That’s very useful type of exercise. I
will try it until the examination on different passages.

5 THE SECONDARY CLASSROOM APPLICATION

th
Only one day after the first application on 12 of June, the task was implemented in a classroom of 23
second-year students in the ELT Department.
The second-year students in ELT Department attend ‘Advanced Writing Skills’ courses for one term, 3
hours a week. Their course syllabus includes theoretical background about the nature of writing skills
and an introduction to teaching writing. They read articles and participated in classroom discussions
on process-oriented approach to writing, characteristics of good writing and good writers, and context
for teaching writing during the term. Considering their background knowledge on essay-writing that
they learned essay types and wrote several drafts in the previous year and considering the issues that
they had been reading and discussing on teaching writing, the task described beforehand was put into
operation to make them aware of reviewing the essay types and designing group works while teaching
writing.
In order to reflect on the classroom task, this time, the course was videotaped and transcribed by the
teacher.
The task was operated in the same way with the one which was conducted one day ago with first year
students. However, there were a few differences stemming from the number of students in the class
and the content differences between two courses. First, the students were asked to form groups of
five. This time, the 5th group was also formed by three students. With a quick decision, the teacher
gave those three students the worksheet of Group E which included the conclusion paragraphs of the
essays. The other components of the group design were the same as the primary classroom
application.
After the group design, this time, the students—again—were asked to identify the type of the student
essays given in their groups. When students completed their tasks, their predictions on the types of
essays were elicited since they had different ideas. Then, without giving the correct answers, the
students were asked to form their new groups and see the whole essays and check their answers
once more.
When students saw the whole essays in their new groups, the answers related to identifying the type
of the essays were elicited again, and each group was able to find them out. Then, as it was for the
first application, the students were asked to find suitable titles for the essays they had. After checking
the answers and comparing them with the original ones, the students were asked to evaluate the task
conducted along with the principles of a ‘task evaluation sheet’ suggested by Hedge (1988, p. 136) at
home, as a homework assignment, since their course program requires them to evaluate certain
writing activities for teaching L2 writing.

5.1 Reflection
For the secondary classroom application, videotaped and transcribed data for the lesson were used by
the teacher together with oral student evaluations about the task implemented. Student evaluations
based on the task evaluation sheet could not be taken into account because of time limitation that it
was the last time the teacher and the students met.
The videotaped data clearly showed that students engaged in the task actively. They also enjoyed the
group activities since they had to form two different groups and work with different people. Although
they had difficulty to identify the types of the essays in their first groups with only one paragraph, the
whole essay in their second group helped them to decide on the type of the essay. It was also
enjoyable for them to match the titles they created and the original ones. Also, as would-be teachers
they had the opportunity to see how to conduct a group writing activity in the classroom in terms of
design and control.
From the students’ points of view, the task was found to be useful since it gave them the opportunity to
see a task in operation different from the suggested ones in their course books. Moreover, they
admitted that they had forgotten the essay types they had learned in the first year, and it was the
chance for them to review them. Finally, although it was not checked by the teacher, the students
thought that it would be very beneficial for them to evaluate the task at home for both future
experiences and getting prepared for the exam in which they would be responsible for evaluating the
writing tasks given.
In summary, the consciousness-raising task implemented in two different classrooms was found to be
quite advantageous for attracting students’ attention and for preparing them for future experiences.
Although it was a task which was created by the classroom teacher in terms of the needs of certain
students, task-based activities or consciousness-raising tasks suggested by certain scholars (Clark &
Ivaniç 1991,Dyer 1996, Flower 1979, Horowitz 1986, Reppen 1994) can be adapted and used in L2
writing classrooms. The outcomes of those awareness-raising activities certainly indicate that students
will gain new insights for group activities and their attitudes towards academic writing will change
positively.

6 CONCLUSION
In this paper, two classroom applications of a consciousness raising task for advanced writing courses
were discussed and reflections on the implementations were presented. The theoretical background
on teaching writing, process-oriented approach and consciousness-raising tasks in writing classrooms
were related to task created by the classroom teacher. The results of the classroom applications were
satisfying enough to discuss the importance of noticing and collaborative work in writing.
What every writing teacher should know is that students frequently need certain amount of awareness
raising activities in which they can fill in the gaps about the subject they previously learned and review
the important points underlined. Moreover, not only for advanced writing courses but also for the lower
level students this sort of tasks would be encouraging, enjoyable and informative so as to reduce the
anxiety the students feel and to change their negative attitudes towards writing into positive.
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