2.7 Developing the writing skills of esl students through the collaborative learning strategy

Collaborative learning has become not only an essential concept in the field of education but also a well-known and widespread activity in most English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and English as a Second Language (ESL) writing classes. The term ‘collaborative learning’ as used in this thesis refers to students working together in small groups on specific activities, with everyone being required to participate actively.

According to Dillenbourg, collaborative learning is ‘a situation in which two or more people learn or attempt to learn something together’. Collaborative learning (CL) emphasizes helping young learners to learn the skills necessary for learning successfully with one another. There are both theoretical and pedagogical bases for the widespread use of group and pair work in education.

According to Vygotsky, the development of human beings takes place in social situations. From a theoretical point of view, using collaborative group interaction has become a topic of research in aspects of both education and social psychology. From a pedagogical perspective, the use of small groups is based on using the communicative approach to L2 instruction that focuses on helping learners to use L2.

Collaborative learning refers to ‘a small group of learners working together as a team to solve problems, complete a task, or accomplish a common goal’. Collaborative or cooperative learning differs from traditional learning because it provides structural opportunities for individuals, who are given specific roles within their groups, to work together to reach common goals. It is usually contrasted with traditional or competitive classroom environments. When students learn separately, their individual performances do not necessarily affect one another either positively or negatively.

Competitive learning, on the other hand, means putting them in direct competition with each other, with the idea that this will have an effect on individual performances. Many benefits have been claimed for collaborative learning. For example, it may help weak students to learn more effectively when they work with strong partners.

It enables students to acquire and develop various skills such as leadership, thinking, building self-esteem, motivating and encouraging low-motivated students. Collaborative learning in the context of collaborative writing means two or more people working together to produce and complete a text, through practising stages and activities such as collecting, planning and organizing ideas, drafting, revising and editing.

Storch claims that collaborative learning in the form of collaborative writing in EFL classes might help students to act socially and cognitively, and suggests that teachers should encourage learners to become involved in social activities that promote interaction and the coconstruction of knowledge [23, p.72].

Graham found that collaborative learning of writing skills helped students to find new ideas together and exposed them to various opinions, encouraged them to discuss, debate, disagree and teach one another as well as helping them to practise aspects of the process approach to writing such as generating ideas

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of collaborative learning on the process approach to teaching writing (pre-writing, drafting, revising and editing) and on the attitudes of ESL students. In other words, it seeks to determine whether using the collaborative learning approach would be more effective than using traditional approaches such as individual learning. Collaborative learning might encourage ESL students to write and express their ideas in proficient and effective ways.

This research investigates the effectiveness of collaborative learning in helping ESL students develop their English writing skills. The study is thus significant because it is designed to explore in depth whether students produce better writing when working in small groups than when working individually. The use of the collaborative writing strategy provides an opportunity for them to express their ideas in small groups instead of individually. Since this is the first study designed specifically to explore in detail the effectiveness of the collaborative learning strategy

Collaborative learning is based on Vygotsky’s concept of the ZPD that is considered the theoretical background for peer collaboration in second language writing. According to De Guerrero and Villamil, the ZPD establishes two levels of development: the actual level and the possible level. The more capable person (expert) can assist the less capable person.

So, collaborative learning involves students who are less advanced in knowledge and who need support and help from more advanced students, who act as experts. Some studies studied the effectiveness of using more advanced peers to improve less advanced students and found that this strategy was more beneficial than having students collaborate with each other

Collaborative learning provides structured opportunities for individuals to work together to reach common goals. It is usually contrasted with traditional individualistic and competitive classroom environments. For example, individual learning does not help students to benefit from their contribution to their learning, whereas the main concern of competitive learning is to place students in competition with each other. Hill and Hill assert that CL can enable learners to achieve highly, develop their thinking and deepen their understanding, develop leadership skills, promote positive views about other learners, build self-esteem and acquire a sense of belonging, and that it also makes for enjoyable learning. Performing tasks in a group can therefore lead children to provide each other with information, suggestions, reminders and encouragement [24, p.28].

Harmer suggests that successful group activities help students to learn from each other and enable each one to access the other’s mind and knowledge. Graham studied how students’ reflections on and performance in collaborative writing encouraged them to discuss, debate, disagree and also to teach one another. CL also enabled them to be more interactive and cooperative and perhaps prepared them more suitably for the twenty-first century. By contrast, he found that during their collaboration, students concentrated on the product rather than the process of writing, and therefore paid a great deal of attention to sentence-level errors rather than to the content and ideas of the text. Collaborative learning is a strategy that helps to increase both the quality and productivity of writing skills.