School of Languages and Linguistics - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 1 of 1
-
ItemInvestigating Online Collaborative Writing Among Arabic L2 Students( 2021)Collaborative writing (CW) activities have captured the attention of second language instructors and researchers over the past two decades, reporting their potential benefits for the second language (L2) learners. With the growing interest in web 2.0 tools and their affordance for collaboration, online collaborative writing tools (e.g., Google Docs) have been increasingly implemented in second language classrooms. To date, most of the studies that examined the nature of students’ interaction and collaboration in online collaborative writing mode have been conducted in English as L2 classes or European languages over a short period of time. This longitudinal study aimed to investigate the nature of students’ online interaction when completing CW tasks in Arabic as a second language (ASL) classes in Saudi Arabia. This study was conducted in two Arabic language institutes in Saudi Arabian universities. Thirty-one ASL students participated in this study which was implemented online outside the regular classrooms over a 15-week semester. The participants formed eight pairs and five triads and jointly completed four collaborative writing tasks (two argumentative and two descriptive). The participants were required to complete each task over two weeks using Google Docs for writing their texts, supplemented with WhatsApp chat for their discussion. The study used a convergent mixed methods design that involved the collection of qualitative and quantitative data from online and offline sources (comments, history revision, texts in Google Docs, WhatsApp chat, interviews, questionnaire, observation notes, DocuViz). Drawing on Storch’s (2002) model of dyadic interaction, I investigated patterns of interaction that the ASL students formed during their online collaborative writing activities. Data analysis identified five patterns of interaction: cooperative, collaborative, active/passive (active/passive/passive for triads), facilitator/contributor (facilitator/contributor/contributor for triads), expert/novice). The findings show that pairs and triads formed relatively stable patterns of interaction across the four CW tasks and most pairs formed more collaborative patterns in the last CW task. Cooperative and collaborative patterns were the predominant patterns of interaction. The findings also identified salient features associated with each pattern of interaction. This study also examined the relationship between the size of the group (pairs vs triads) and language learning. The findings showed that pairs and triads focused on language, content, and structure related episodes during their online interaction. However, triads produced more language-related episodes (LREs) and were able to correctly resolve most of their LREs than pairs. The findings also revealed that pairs and triads used the two online tools (Google Docs and WhatsApp) simultaneously to foster their online collaboration. Students deliberated over language in Google docs while the WhatsApp chats showed more discussion of content and structure-related issues. Multiple factors emerged from the interview data to explain students’ online behaviour and the patterns of interaction. Using Sociocultural theory and Activity Theory that informed this study, these factors were categorized as individual, tools, group, task-related factors and were discussed. The study concludes by proposing several implications for theory and L2 learning pedagogy. Particularly, this study provides new insights into learners’ interaction in synchronous and asynchronous online collaborative L2 writing activities, and the opportunities that provide for language learning.