VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERISTY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

ASSIGNMENT ON THEORIES OF SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING

FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY

Applying collaborative learning to enhance students’ writing competencies

CANDIDATE’S NAME: Nghiêm Thị Phượng

DATE OF BIRTH: 30/01/1998
STUDENT’S ID: 21045292
CLASS: QH2021_D2
INSTRUCTOR: ASSOC. PROF. DR. HOANG TUYET MINH

Hanoi - 02/2023
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I. Introduction
1. Rationale
Writing has been widely regarded as a crucially essential skill in the teaching and
learning of English as a Second Language (ESL) as it is a comprehensive skill that helps
reinforce vocabulary, grammar, thinking, planning, editing, revising, and other elements.
Writing competency is the specifics ability which helps writers put their thoughts into
words in a meaningful form and to mentally interact with the message. It also helps to
improve all the other skills of listening, speaking and reading as they are all interrelated
(Saed and Al-Omari in Yunus, and Chien 2016: 1).
Collaborative learning is a type of instruction where learners are grouped together to
work on an assignment, project, or task. Becoming competent in English written
language requires consciously directed effort and deliberate choice of language
(Rivers,1975). As a result, students may easily lose their motivation in writing lessons
due to both subjective and objective reasons. This study attempts to explore the students’
attitude and perception towards collaborative learning in enhancing their English writing
competency.

2. Aims
There have been some noticeable changes in the way educators teach in
classrooms. It is because of the new skills that are needed for the 21st century. Contrary
to traditional teaching, language teaching in the information age aims at developing
students’ language competencies which refer to the knowledge and abilities to use
English in four inter-related skills: speaking, listening; reading, and writing. Though
these four skills equally important to help learners become competent with the language,
writing is sometimes perceived as the most difficult to learn because it requires linguistic
knowledge, cognitive, and socio-cultural aspect to convey its meaning. In fact, this
language skill is often ignored or even neglected in actual language classroom. This is
due to the exclusion of this skill in the high school entrance exam or even GCSE.

Most of the students in the surveyed school have problems in fulfilling the requirements
of writing due to low proficiency of the language. At the same time, their insufficient
knowledge of English vocabulary, grammar, spelling, and punctuation further contribute
to their of interest in writing.

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Different methods are employed by English teachers around the world in teaching writing
in the classrooms. Among the methods that are deemed to suit the teaching of writing is
the corporation of Collaborative Learning. Numerous researchers around the world are
studying practical applications of CL principles and methods for helping students work
together more effectively (Jacobs, Power & Inn, 2002). CL has been found to be
successful and productive teaching methods to develop learners’ linguistic, social and
communicative skill because it provide maximum chances for students-students
interaction with consequential input and output in a supportive atmosphere (Ahangari &
Samadian, 2014).

Since CL is known to provide positive interdependence support on student group

members in enhancing their writing skills, therefore the researchers of this study intend to
further investigate how CL provides knowledge that is responsible for developing writing
skill by answering the following research question: Does group work in CL improve the
students’ writing skill in essays? In view of that, the results of this study are expected to
provide benefits and information to other parties such as teachers, school administrators,
the Ministry of Education and Curriculum Development centers. Among them are as a
source of knowledge to the teacher trainees at universities and institutes of teacher
education as one of the alternative methods in the teaching and learning processes.

The aim of this study is to examine the effects of using CL in improving writing
skills. In addition, the researcher also attempts to investigate their attitude and perception
towards learning English through collaborative learning.

3. Scope
The study mainly focuses on investigating the effects of collaborative learning in
the enhancement of students’ English writing competency. In order to achieve this aim,
the author makes an effort to identify the term “collaborative learning”, including its
definition, elements of CL, CL in developing students’ writing ability.

Moreover, this study also defines the definition of writing skills, writing teaching
and learning approaches, writing elements and stategies to teach writing skills for high
school students.

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4. Methods
This research follows an action research design which focused on the efforts to
improve the real condition of the English teaching-learning process. One of the main
goals of action research was to identify a problematic situation or issue that the
participants such as teachers, students, managers, administrators, or even parents care
about worth looking into more deeply and systematically. The stages of action research
were planning, action, observation, and reflection that problematized (in a positive sense)
issues, dilemmas or gaps in teaching situations. There were distinct benefits that made
action research attractive to many teachers and made a difference to the way they
regarded themselves as teaching professionals. Action research could be considered part
of a continuum of becoming a thinking and theorizing professional. This research
observed the way to improve high school students’ writing skills by applying
Collaborative Learning. The data were described qualitatively so that the research used a
descriptive-qualitative design. However, the researcher also used quantitative data to
support her qualitative data.
II. Theoretical background
Writing Skills
Writing is an activity of expressing someone’s ideas which are arranged properly
into words and sentences. Nunan (2003, p88) suggests that writing is the process of
thinking to invent ideas and express them into statement and paragraph clearly. In writing
process, a writer should be able to think and find ideas related to the topic she is going to
write. She also has to be able to organize the ideas to create a good product of writing. In
addition, according to Brown (2001, p348), “writing is a thinking process”. He then
explains that writing is a process of putting ideas down on paper to transform thought
into words and give them structure and coherent organization. It can be inferred that
writing cannot be done instantaneously. A writer should think about what she is going to
write, have some ideas in their mind, think about how to put the ideas
in correct orders, in order to produce a text which can attract people who read it.
In their recent research of Febriyanti and Dewi (2018) mentioned that: “Writing is
very essential to be mastered. Also, it is is one of the productive language skills and it
gives students the opportunity to practice real-life activities in the classroom” (p.110).
This criterion is manifested by Rao (2017) who indicated “Writing in English is

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considered the most difficult skill because of its complexity in syntactic, sematic,
morphological and phonological aspects” (p. 80). According to Ahmed (2016), writing is
an essential but difficult ability to learn, a communication skill which is crutial in today’s
society.
Related to the explanation above, it is understood that writing is a way to express
and explain ideas from the writer to the reader. In the process of writing, the writer
should be able to organize their ideas or thinking into good paragraph organization to be
able to create a good product of writing so that the reader is able to understand it easily.
Writing coherence and cohesion.
Coherence refers to the orderly and logical presentation of ideas in a text by an
author, so that the reader can understand a message (Briesmaster & Etchegaray, 2017).
Nevertheless, Faradhibah and Nur (2017) stated that most of the learners often are
confused with their main idea and they tried to cover many ideas instead of focusing on
the main idea. Furthermore, students do not have enough knowledge to see the difference
between the main idea and the supporting idea.
Cohesion refers to the logical connectors used in the structuring of a text, applying
grammatical and lexical aspects, such as personal or possessive pronouns, synonyms and
punctuation. In the study by Ahmad et al. (2019),stated that cohesion establishes the
semantic, grammatical and lexical link between the components of a text to facilitate its
interpretation. On the other hand, Briesmaster and Etchegaray (2017) mentioned that
cohesion affects the interpretation of a writer’s discourse as well, students should
correctly produce cohesive texts to make sure others understand their writing.
Cooperative Learning
Cooperative Learning or CL is an instructional strategy based on the human
instinct of cooperation. CL is described as a method where students work in small groups
and are given rewards and recognition based on their groups’ performance (Slavin, 1980).
Mandal (2009) adds that the idea behind the CL methods are that when group
rather than individuals are rewarded, students will be motivated to help one another to
master academic materials. In cooperative group work, each member of a team is
responsible not only for learning what is taught, but also to help other members of the
group to learn and create atmosphere of achievement. It can be said that students learn
effectively when they work cooperatively. This statement is strengthened by Slavin

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(1980) who say learners will benefit more from sharing each other’s thoughts when
working together as a group rather than working alone. Richards and Renandya (2002) at
the same time agree that CL is a tool of some methods which teachers use to encourage
mutual helpfulness in the groups and the active participation of all members.
In order to construct a lesson in the CL method, Johnson and Johnson (2000)
outline five fundamental elements of CL as described below:
Positive Interdependence: to achieve the targeted goal, student team members
depend and rely on one another. Every student team member has to contribute ideas and
views, and further share responsibility of performing good work in completing the team
tasks assigned to them.
Individual and Group Accountability: Every student team member must be
responsible for contributing their own share of the work and master all materials to be
learnt for the group’s success. The performance of each individual must be assessed and
the result is given back to the group.
Face to Face Promotive Interaction: another feature of CL is that it emphasizes
on small group interaction. Even though some tasks are completed individually, group
members at the same time play an important role by providing one another with
feedback, challenging reasoning and conclusions, supporting and encouraging one
another to achieve the group’s goals.
Interpersonal and Small Group Skills: these are the basic skills in teamwork.
Group members must learn interpersonal skill such as active learning, staying on task,
asking questions, encouraging, helping others in order to facilitate teamwork, create trust
and enhance communication.
Group Processing: group processing is reflecting on a group session to describe
what member actions were helpful and unhelpful and make decisions about what actions
to continue or change. It also helps to promote self-esteem and positive attitudes towards
the learning process.
To conclude, CL is a group-learning activity to achieve a common goal (Artz &
Newman, 1990). Its establishment for learning is based on the socially structured
exchange of information between student team members, where each member is
responsible for his or her own learning and should be able to motivate each other
(Richards & Rodgers, 2001).

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Collaborative Writing Strategy
It is necessary for the teacher to evaluate students’ writing by evaluating it, the
teacher will know how far the ability of the students and the effectiveness of the
technique that has been used. Give evaluation of writing helps students to examine their
ideas, facts, and arguments. The purpose of it is to demonstrate the overall quality of their
writing that is used to improve their ability in writing. According to McCrimmon (1996),
there are some indicators of writing test. They are completeness (general statement and
supporting details about the object), unity (relate to main idea of the texts), and coherence
(relate to each other).
The purpose of writing is expressing ideas as well as transmitting the message
from the writer to the readers. There are some aspects in writing that have a great
influence of writing (Hughes, 2003:101). First, grammar,it is the pattern of form and
arrangement of the knowledge. It has very important role in language. Second,
vocabulary, it is means that appropriate vocabulary in writing text. Third, mechanic
includes spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. Fourth, fluency, it is a factor makes the
sentences sound natural. Each sentence is clear and has an obvious emphasis.
Fluency can be stated as the use of correct structure and appropriate vocabulary to
make the composition easy to understand. Last, organization is important for a paragraph
to have good organization, which means that all of the sentences discuss only one topic.
The paragraph only has one topic sentence and
supporting sentences focus on the main idea.
In this research the researcher used scoring rubric that developed by Hughes
(2003: 101). Next scoring profile proposed by Brown (2007), the researcher will used this
scoring rubric to evaluate students’ writing. He gives clearer separate component of
development of sub skills in individuals, and do not have to spend more time to complete
the scoring rubric because the order of five categories are organized appropriately.
Collaborative Writing Technique: Theoretical Perspective
It is clear that collaboration refers to a group discussion in writing, in this way,
personal combination determines optimal results among them-group or pairs.
Accordingly, Frakas (1991) offers four possible definitions useful in engaging group
discussion through the core activities, they are:
- Pair or group students jointly construct the finished text of a paper;

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- Pair or group students participating to writing aspects in a paper;
- One or more students revising a paper through editing and reviewing,
- Each partner working actively with another or other partners and drafting a paper based
on their own thoughts or ideas.
In collaborative writing, students work together in pairs or triads in composing a formal
paper. Each student participate and cooperate at the steps of the writing process such as
brainstorming ideas, gathering and organizing ideas, drafting, revising, and editing a
paper. Working together actually help students to learn and run writing process
effectively. Finally students’ work in composing a text
will better and better and can be easily read by readers (Barkely F. Elizabeth et., al.
2005). Collaborative writing process can refer to about how groups or pairs provide
feedback to each other, what they search for help from each other, and how they discuss
and negotiate strategies in pointing writing concerns (e.g., how to mark a missing
citation) (Kessler, Grek, et.al, 2012). The purpose of the collaborative writing does not
only produce final product but also construct meaning in collaboration to achieve higher
quality of product. The revising and editing processes are mutual relationship to the
learning process. The most practical way teachers provide feedback to students’ errors
and monitor them in working in group (Shin WanTeow, 2014).
In teaching writing, teachers also have to orient on several kinds of writing
knowledge namely knowledge of the content, knowledge of writing steps to connect the
ideas, knowledge of writing rules, and procedural knowledge needed to employ the three
other kinds of knowledge in writing a written product (Hillocks in O’Malley, 1996).
Those are as principal components to teaching writing to students. The theory is also
supported by Tribble (1996) that in order to understand a specific task in writing, writers
(students) requires the range of knowledge which can be summarized as follows:
a) Content knowledge: It is the knowledge of the concepts involved in the subject area.
b) Context knowledge: It is the knowledge of the context in which the text will be read.
c) Language system knowledge: It is the knowledge of those aspects of the language
system necessary for the completion of the task.
d) Writing process knowledge
e) It is the knowledge of the most appropriate way of preparing for a specific writing
task.

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 In order to be able to produce a good written text, teachers should require
procedures to teach writing in order to be achieved the objectives of teaching writing
itself. Therefore, this article suggests collaboration in writing an essay. As stated by Reid,
M John (2000) writing requires collaboration in order to be easier, better, and more
successful when doing a writing process in talking, drafting, revising, reading and
editing. Furthermore, the exchange of ideas provides open-ended, real-life context to
reach the objectives of writing (Blanton, 1992; Savova and Donato, 1991 in Reid, M
John, 2000). Reid adds that in small groups, students can:
a. Collaboratively gather information, generate, and support opinions, and respond to
ideas.
b. Problem-solve, evaluate, and make decisions.
c. Role-play or participate in simulation activities in the process of discovery.
d. Collaborate in reader response activities: annotating, analyzing, evaluating articles, and
student essay.
Thus, to engage collaboration among students, it is recommended from this
concept to appoint students to work in pair. They consist of a helper and a writer and they
play their role based on the task. Specific tasks need to be done by the helper and the
writer when they write collaboratively. The one who is at a higher writing ability plays
the role as a helper, and the one who is at a lower writing level plays the role as a writer.
It indicates the helper is smarter and more knowledgeable than his/her partner as writer
because he/she is able to assist a writer to guide and develop a text to be better. Each of
them has the responsibility to contribute to the successful writing product. Pair activities
create interaction each other and allow students to explore the ideas what they have.
III. Application
Teacher delivers demo pedagogical procedures applying collaborative learning to
enhance students’ writing competencies as follows:
Step 1 Idea Generation
The questions can be in the form of yes/no questions or WH questions. In this
context, each pair is hoped to understand important components of the various texts such
as generic structure, grammatical forms, and vocabulary and so on.
Then, the writer takes the questions and makes lists to answer each one. The
teacher then assigns the helper to review the writer’s key words, to develop the ideas into

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paragraph, and to organize the ideas in order and negotiate it together. Then, the pair
reviews and decides whether the organization should be changed or not. It indicates
negotiating role each of them. If the ideas may not match from the topic, they can code
them by underlining or highlighting with a red marker. Then, pairs choose to draw lines
linking or around related ideas, so that a "semantic map" is constructed.
Step 2 Drafting
In this stage, the teacher reminds writers and helpers do not have to worry much
about the linguistics forms, diction, spelling or punctuation. It emphasizes on letting ideas
to flow. This step aims to give the writer opportunities to start writing a rough draft based
on the information what they have from the helper. Both writer and helper are asked to
arrange their ideas into paragraph and they are allowed by the teacher to use a dictionary.
In this way, a writer begins writing rough drafts based on the discovered ideas and then
rough drafts are reviewed by the helper. The writer focuses on the arrangement of words
and phrase into sentences and further organized into paragraph. The other side, the helper
gives comments and feedback from the drafts and they discuss ideas to each other. For
drafting students should have a main idea in their thoughts that they would like to
communicate to the audience as readers in order to give a clear direction to their writing.
During the activity, the teacher monitor around the class to provide assistance, guidance,
and comments if they need.
Step 3 Reading
In this step, the writer reads the draft. When the writer reads the draft aloud to the
helper, the helper provides notes and gives some corrections if the draft that sound
incorrectly and inappropriately for words or phrases and the helper may also comment on
the clarity and relevance of the ideas and their coherence in the kind of written comment.
Then, the writer reorganizes what has been written in the first rough draft and to refine
ideas based on the feedback from the helper.
Step 4 Revising
Revision is a part of writing process where the helper reviews and then he/she
amends their work so that it looks fresh. Then the writer writes down some changes that
are corrected by the helper.
However, the helper should consider several aspects of revision. It can be a
revising guide for the helper by to check the writer thoughts in writing drafts by using

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yes/no questions adapted from Harcourt (2012) as follows: Ideas; Organization; Voice;
Word Choice; Sentence Fluency
Step 4 Editing
In this step, the helper and the writer look at the whole essay to edit together and
consider what improvement might be made. This process is the last step to check error of
words, phrases, or sentences and punctuation. Obviously the writer and the helper correct
directly the draft more than once, check the five editing criteria:
a. Meaning
b. Order (organization of the separate ideas in the text, organization within a phrase or
sentence, and organization of order of sentences)
c. Spelling
d. Punctuation
e. Style (word choice and sentence structure)
The role of the teacher reminds the pair to use the checklists so that they may add
new ideas; delete irrelevant sentences and information and rearrange ideas to improve the
organization. The process of editing is the final stage to correct inappropriate words,
wrong sentences or error punctuation and so on to produce the better writing version.
Step 5 Best Copy
The writer then copies out a neat or best version of the corrected draft. The helper
provides help when necessary, depending on the skill of the writer. In this case, the
teacher instructs the writer role to write the last version of the writing product. The best
copy is a joint product of the pair and is then hand in to the teacher.
Step 6 The Teacher Evaluation
In this step, students will have an opportunity to receive comments and instructive
feedback directly from the teacher.
The teacher instructs each pair to submit their best product, then the teacher
provide them feedback to correct their writing explicitly. The teacher's comments focus
on meaning/idea, order, style, spelling, and punctuation, which are the five editing
criteria stated in Step 4. In evaluating, the teacher also holds on a conference by assigning
the pair to exchange their composition to be proofread by other pairs. After that, the pair
discusses the corrections, feedback or comments from other pairs, if they still have
problems with the corrections, feedback or comments from other pairs. If the pairs still

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have problems in their work, the teacher can explain and solve them together at the end
of conference. Next the teacher asks the student (writer) to revise the composition based
on the correction, feedback provided and comments from their friends or their teacher.
Finally, the final composition from any teacher’s and pairs’ feedback are revised and
submitted to the teacher.
IV. Conclusion
The result of this research will be expected to contribute some significance in
theoretical and practical.

Theoretically, this sresearch gives the real sample and experience toward the
researcher and the reader in the way of collaborative learning to improve the students’
English writing competence. As the result, this research also gives more ideas for
secondary teachers to improve the students’ language ability.

Practically, the findings of this research will be expected to provide useful

information or reliable reference for all teachers and learners in order that they are able to
understand the role that collaborative learning might be able to play in improving
students’ achievement in the learning process.

Furthermore, course book authors and curriculum developers might benefit from
the results of this study by gaining a deeper understanding of collaborative learning,
which could inform their decisions about including particular activities and techniques
into their works.

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V. References:
1. Baloche, L. A. (1998). The Cooperative Classroom: Empowering Learning. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
2. Barkley, F. Elizabeth, et. al. (2005). Collaborative learning technique. First
Edition, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publisher.
3. Byrne, D. (1993). Teaching Writing Skills. Essex: Longman Group
4. ASCILITE conference Melbourne (p. 9-12).
5. Harmer, J. (2004). How to Teach Writing. Harlow: Longman.
6. Ismail, S., & Maasum, T. N. R. T. M. (2009). The Effects of Cooperative Learning in
Enhancing Writing Performance. Retrieved from
http://pkukmweb.ukm.my/~solls09/Proceeding/PDF/Shafini.pdf
7. Jacobs, G. M., Power, M. A., & Inn, L. W. (2002). The Teacher’s Sourcebook for
Cooperative Learning: Practical Methods, Basic Principles, and Frequently Asked
Questions. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
8. Johnson, R. T., & Johnson, D. W. (1994). An overview of cooperative learning. In J.
S. Thousand, R. A. Villa & T. A. Nevin (Eds.), Creativity and Collaborative Learning:
The Practical Guide to Empowering Students, Teachers, and Families (pp. 31-44).
Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.
9. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1999). Learning Together and Alone, 5th Ed.
Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (2000). Cooperative Learning
Methods: A Metaanalysis. Minneapolis: Cooperative Learning Center at the University of
Minnesota.
10. Karim, A. A. (2012). Cooperative Learning Strategies in Enhancing Students’
Writing Proficiency: The Case of Second Year LMD Students at Mohamed Khidher
University (Master’s thesis). University of Mohamed Khidher Biskra, Biskra.
11. Mandal, R. R. (2009). Cooperative Learning strategies to enhance writing skills. The
Modern Journal of Applied Linguistics, 1, 93-102.
12. Mukminatin, N. (1997). The Difference of Students’ Writing Achievement across
Different Courses Levels (Doctoral dissertation). Malang: State University of Malang.
13. Raimes, A. (1983). Methods in Teaching Writing. New York: Oxford University
Press.

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14. Reid, M. Joy. (2012). Teaching ESL writing. Prentice Hall International (UK)
Limited, Inc.
15. Slavin, R. E. (1995). Cooperative Learning: Theory, Research and Practice, 2nd Ed.
Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
16. Slavin, R. E. (2011). Instruction based on Cooperative Learning. In R. E. Mayer & P.
A. Alexander (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Learning and Instruction (pp. 344-360).
New York: Taylor & Francis.
17. Starkey, L. (2004). How to Write Great Essays. New York: Learning Express.
18. Widiati, Utami. (2003). Training EFL writing students in Indonesia in the use of
strategies for peer response. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Monash University.

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