The Impact of the Use of Collaborative Writing on Attitude of EFL Students towards Learning Writing Skills

Abstract

The main goal of the study was to examine the impact of employing collaborative writing on students’ attitude towards learning EFL writing skills. To this end, based on the mean results of the paragraph a writing skills test was administered before the experiment, two sections of Grade 11 students from Felegebirahn Secondary School in Amhara Region, Ethiopia were chosen as participants of the study. These two sections of students were categorized as experimental (n=44) and control (n=44) groups using simple random sampling technique. The experimental group exercised paragraph level writing tasks collaboratively, whereas the control group practiced the identical writing tasks individually for 12 weeks in the 2019 academic year. Questionnaire, which was intended to find out the attitude of EFL students about learning writing skills before and after the training, was the major data collection tool used in the study. A semi-structured interview with a few selected students was also undertaken to validate the data acquired by the questionnaire. In order to examine the significance of the attitude questionnaire mean differences of the participants within as well as between the selected study groups, T-test was conducted. The results of the study showed that students who experienced collaborative writing for over 12 weeks brought positive attitudinal changes on learning EFL writing skills after being introduced to collaborative writing. It was found that they improved their attitude toward learning writing skills more significantly than students who did the writing tasks alone. The majority of respondents in the open-ended questionnaire and interview data agreed that after exposure to collaborative writing, the students eventually enjoyed and were inspired to write in English. It was concluded that practicing writing tasks collaboratively in EFL writing classes can have a favorable impact on EFL students’ attitude towards learning writing skills. This, in turn, encourages the students to opportunely exercise writing in English both inside and outside their classes. It is, therefore, recommended that teachers in EFL classes should support the students to practice collaborative writing in EFL writing lessons.