The Impact of Collaborative Writing on the Writing Fluency of Iranian EFL Learners

Abstract

Writing is no longer an individual activity but an interactive process through which social abilities of the learners are reinforced. To promote interaction in the writing class, collaboration has been suggested to be advantageous. The present study aimed to examine the impact of practicing in pairs on the writing fluency of Iranian EFL learners. To this end, an OPT test was administered to female EFL learners according to which 90 homogenous learners at an intermediate level comprised the research sample. Afterwards, the participants were randomly divided into two groups including a control group of 30 students, each producing a written text individually and an experimental group of 60 learners working in pairs. Since each pair produced a single text, the numbers of texts rather than the number of participants was considered. In order to compare the data collected from two groups, a t- test was used. The results obtained from the essays written in the first session of the writing phase revealed that pairs produced less fluent texts than the individual writers. More specifically, the average number of words, T-units, and clauses in individual essays was less than that of pairs. The essays written in the last session revealed that there was a considerable improvement in the use of T-units and clauses produced by pairs; however, the fluency of the written texts was not noticeably significant in comparison with the fluency of essays produced by the individuals. The findings also revealed that practicing in pairs did improve the overall quality of the learners' writing productions even though the fluency of written texts did not change significantly.