Teachers’ reflection on and students’ experiences in collaborative EFL writing: a Narrative inquiry

Rohmah, Galuh Nur (2017) Teachers’ reflection on and students’ experiences in collaborative EFL writing: a Narrative inquiry. Doctoral thesis, Universitas Negeri Malang.

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Abstract

In the middle of writing pedagogy mainsteam which places writing as solitary activity, collaborative writing has been emerged as a promising activity providing both instructional and nurturing effects. Then, collaborative writing has been common practice in the teaching of EFL writing. When teachers taught and students wrote through collaborative writing, it was conflicting situation for them and invited some tensions. Revealing their experiences became an academic effort to add knowledge about collaborative writing in EFL context.

The study was approached through narrative inquiry which primarily focused on EFL university teachers’ experiences in teaching and students’ experiences in learning through collaborative EFL writing. A pilot study was done to identify the participants. The three teacher-participants were selected among EFL writing teachers at UIN Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang who had process approach orientation and intensively applied peer collaboration for some years. Meanwhile, the two student-participants were selected based on their three-semester enrollment in Writing courses which used collaborative writing. Narrative frame and interview were used as the research instruments. Both teachers and students were asked to write their experiences in the narrative frame to have past, present, future order from their experiences. The interview was done after the participants finished writing the narrative frames. The interview was to gain depeer information about their life history with collaborative writing, contemporary experiences with collaborative writing activity, and aspirations for future direction.

Teachers reflected that applying collaborative writing in the middle of mainstream writing pedagogy raised some opportunities and challenges. The legitimation from sociocultural perspective, CLT, and process writing pedagogy has made collaborative writing accountable in EFL writing context. Teachers’ reflection in managing collaborative writing informed that grouping system and evaluation procedures should be carefully handled to have high equality and mutuality. Teachers shared that collaborative writing gave great possibilites for giving instructional and nurturing effects. The findings of the study also reveal teachers’ aspirations for their future collaborative writing.

Being intensively exposed by collaborative writing activities, firstly, students felt it was difficult to work together in producing a text. They felt that it was like endless competition, and it easily raised situation in which there was dominant-passive relationship. Meanwhile, students also narrated that collaborative writing provided instructional effects indicating from the improvement on their grammar, content, and language style. The collaboration also stimulated other skills such as social interaction, negotiation, and responsibility. For future collaborative writing, students hoped that it should be built based on complementary situation and interdependent relationship in finishing the writing task.

This narrative study is not free from limitations. It challenged me to take balance position in representing teachers and students’ narratives. It is also still far from its ability to capture all important experiences that reflected day-to-day experiences of teachers and students. However, this narrative study offers theoretical and pedagogical implication. The theoretical implication is to incorporate previous efforts to confirm the sociocultural theory, CLT, and process writing pedagogy as strong supports for applying collaborative writing. The pedagogical implication of the study is it provides supplementary empirical evidence for the benefits of collaborative writing in EFL context. It also informs the complexities of collaborative writing faced by teachers and students which then can be used as point of departure for better practice of collaborative writing in EFL context.

Point worth noting about this narrative study is that educational needs and approaches are changing, and teacher-educators need to explore various approaches, methods, and pedagogies to address these changing needs in their teaching and learning. A need analysis and research on teacher training programmes using collaborative writing should be conducted before any changes in their pedagogical practices. For further studies, involving students from all proficiency levels to share the narratives will be essential to conduct.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Keywords:	collaborative EFL writing; teachers’ experiences; students’ experiences; narrative inquiry
Subjects:	13 EDUCATION > 1301 Education Systems > 130103 Higher Education
Divisions:	Faculty of Humanities > Department of English Language and Letters
Depositing User:	Galuh 085257478585 Rohmah
Date Deposited:	07 Dec 2018 16:20

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