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Comparing the effect of collaborative and individual prewriting on EFL learners’ writing development
Journal of Second Language Writing xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Second Language Writing journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jslw
Comparing the effect of collaborative and individual prewriting on EFL learners’ writing development Kim McDonougha, , Jindarat De Vleeschauwerb ⁎
a b
Concordia University, Canada Chiang Mai University, Thailand
ARTICLE INFO
ABSTRACT
Keywords: L2 writing Collaborative prewriting Analytic ratings Accuracy Coordination Subordination
Despite claims about its potential positive impact on L2 writers' written performance, prewriting planning (i.e., a dedicated time for planning prior to writing) has not demonstrated consistently beneficial effects on linguistic measures of accuracy, fluency, and complexity. Studies that compared individual and collaborative prewriting planning similarly have reported mixed findings. Since most planning studies have not examined how participation in various planning conditions facilitates L2 writers' longer term development, this preliminary report from a larger study compares the pretest-posttest performance of Thai EFL writers (N = 60) who carried out three practice writing tasks over one semester. Whereas half of the students planned individually during the practice tasks, the other students collaboratively planned before separating to compose individually. All students carried out the pretest and posttest individually. Their tests and practice writing tasks were rated using an analytic rubric (content, organization, grammar, and vocabulary) and coded for linguistic measures of accuracy (errors/word), coordination (coordinated phrases/clauses), and subordination (dependent clauses/clauses). The multivariate results indicate that students who had planned individually improved in terms of analytic ratings, while students who had planned collaboratively showed accuracy gains. Findings are situated in terms of prior planning research and areas for future investigation.
1. Introduction Although pretask planning was initially studied in terms of its effect on L2 oral task performance, specifically linguistic dimensions of performance such as accuracy, fluency, and complexity (e.g., Yuan & Ellis, 2003), researchers increasingly have explored its impact on L2 written performance. Through reference to writing models proposed by Flower and Hayes (1981) and Kellogg (1996), researchers have raised the possibility that planning may help L2 writers focus their attention on the various tasks involved in producing a written text, such as setting goals, generating ideas, organizing ideas, and selecting language forms, thereby freeing up attentional resources during the composing process. However, due to the non-linear and recursive nature of writing, it is possible that prewriting planning, which is a period of time dedicated to planning prior to beginning to write (Johnson, Mercado, & Acevedo, 2012), may have little impact on L2 writing because writers can also plan during writing time, which is referred to as online planning (Johnson et al., 2012). Empirical studies that tested the impact of various prewriting and online planning conditions on L2 writers' performance have provided contradictory findings. Whereas a few studies have reported that individual prewriting planning facilitated English L2
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Corresponding author at: 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd W, Education Department, FG 6-151, Montreal, QC H3G 1M8, Canada. E-mail address: [email protected] (K. McDonough).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2019.04.003 Received 3 January 2019; Received in revised form 16 April 2019; Accepted 16 April 2019 1060-3743/ © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article as: Kim McDonough and Jindarat De Vleeschauwer, Journal of Second Language Writing, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2019.04.003
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writers' fluency and syntactic complexity (Ellis & Yuan, 2004; Rostamian, Fazilatar, & Jabbari, 2018), other research has found no advantages for prewriting planning (Ong & Zhang, 2010, 2013). Studies that compared prewriting planning conditions related to content, organization, or goal setting have reported no differences in the lexical or syntactic complexity of essays written by English L1 and L2 students and only a small effect for fluency (Johnson & Nicodemus, 2016; Johnson et al., 2012). Thus, the planning studies to date have provided inconsistent evidence that individual prewriting planning positively impacts L2 writers' performance. Expanding on studies that examined individual planning conditions, researchers have begun to explore the effectiveness of collaborative prewriting. Motivated by claims about the benefits of peer interaction for L2 learning and positive findings for collaborative writing tasks, researchers have investigated whether collaboration during prewriting positively impacts text quality as measured through analytic rubrics or linguistic features. In an early comparative study, Shi (1998) found that there were no differences in the analytic ratings of texts written by ESL students following teacher-led prewriting discussions, peer prewriting discussions, or no discussion. In an EAP context, Neumann and McDonough (2014) reported that English L2 university students wrote paragraphs that received descriptively higher analytic ratings after collaborative prewriting as opposed to individual prewriting; however, it was beyond the scope of their study to compare the rating using inferential statistics. Finally, in an EFL context, McDonough and colleagues (McDonough, De Vleeschauwer, & Crawford, 2018), found collaborative prewriting helped Thai EFL students write problem/solution paragraphs that received higher analytic ratings and were more accurate than paragraphs written by individual planners, but there were no significant differences for syntactic complexity measures (coordination and subordination). However, in a larger study that included a collaborative writing condition (McDonough, De Vleeschauwer, & Crawford, 2018), they found no differences between collaborative and individual prewriting for analytic ratings, accuracy, or subordination. In sum, the comparative studies to date have provided conflicting findings as to whether collaborative prewriting planning has a more positive impact on L2 writers' texts than individual planning. Important questions that have received less attention in planning research are whether any benefits that L2 writers may gain through planning persist over time or whether writers who plan collaboratively experience any benefits when subsequently carrying out individual writing tasks. Although it did not focus specifically on planning, a classroom-based study by Shehadeh (2011) compared the longer term impact of collaborative and individual writing practice on EFL students' writing development over one semester. He found that students who completed collaborative writing tasks throughout the semester received higher individual posttest writing ratings for content, organization, and vocabulary than students who had practiced writing individually. These findings indicate that benefits generated through collaboration may carry over when students subsequently write texts individually; however, the focus there was on collaborative writing as opposed to collaborative prewriting. Focusing specifically on prewriting planning before computer-mediated writing tasks, Amiryousefi (2017) compared teacher-monitored collaborative prewriting, student-led collaborative prewriting or individual planning. One week after carrying out a writing task according to one of the planning conditions, EFL students wrote a similar text without any organized planning. Amiryousefi summarized the findings as showing that students who had experienced teacher-monitored collaborative planning wrote more accurate texts, while those who had planned individually had greater complexity. There were no clear advantages for student-led collaborative planning, although these students did produce more accurate texts than those who had planned individually. Thus, although collaborative writing has been found to positively impact students' individual writing development, any benefits for collaborative prewriting in the absence of teacher monitoring are less clear. In sum, prior studies of individual and collaborative prewriting planning have provided mixed findings as to whether prewriting planning positively impacts L2 writers' overall text ratings or linguistic measures of accuracy, fluency, and complexity. Furthermore, little research has explored whether any immediate benefits of collaborative prewriting facilitate L2 writers' longer-term development. Therefore, to further explore the potential benefits of collaborative prewriting practice on individual writing development, the current study addresses the following research question: Does collaborative prewriting facilitate Thai EFL writers' development over time? Using data from a larger study about collaboration in L2 writing, this short communication focuses exclusively on the L2 writers' development, which was operationalized as changes in text ratings, accuracy, coordination or subordination from pretest to posttest. Due to the limited research that has investigated the developmental effects associated with collaborative prewriting, no predictions were made. 2. Method 2.1. Participants & instructional context The participants were 60 EFL students (31 women, 29 men) enrolled in undergraduate degree programs at a public university in northern Thailand. Their mean age was 19.7 years (SD = 1.2), and they had studied English previously in primary and secondary schools for a mean of 13.9 years (SD = 2.2). The students had never taken any standardized proficiency tests, but they were considered by the English Department to fall within the A2-B1 levels on the Common European Framework of Reference. They were enrolled in two classes (30 students per class) of the same critical reading and writing EFL course that was required for their undergraduate degree. Both classes met for two, 75-minute class periods per week for a total of 30 class periods in a 17-week semester (including holidays and exams). The class targeted all four English language skills, but emphasized critical reading and writing skills. In terms of writing, the course targeted paragraph-level writing skills such as writing introductory and concluding sentences, giving reasons with supporting details, and using discourse markers, and focused on different paragraph types (i.e., descriptive, opinion, data commentary, process, narrative). 2
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2.2. Materials & procedure The materials included two writing tests and three practice writing tasks that complemented the content focus of lessons in the students' theme-based EFL textbook. The tests presented a social issue (obesity or social media use) and provided a figure with statistical information (i.e., obesity levels or social media use in different countries) followed by a short list of problems associated with each issue. The writing prompts asked students to write a short article (250–300 words) for a student newspaper that explained the social issue and posed some solutions to its associated problems. The writing tests are provided in the Appendix. Prior to data collection, the tests were pilot tested with students enrolled in an EFL class at the same university to check for potential topic differences. The pilot test confirmed that the students performed similarly regardless of topic (obesity or social media). The practice writing tasks complemented three lessons about internet and technology, weather and climate, and sports and competition. The specific topics targeted in the writing tasks were Facebook use, climate change, and Spartan races, and each task matched the paragraph type introduced in its corresponding lesson (i.e., opinion, data commentary, and process, respectively). Each task provided some background information about the topic, a graph or table for brainstorming ideas, and a bullet-point outline template. The writing prompts identified a target audience and purpose (e.g., contributing a blog post to the website of the campus environment club) and suggested a word range of 200–250 words. All five writing tasks were administered during the students’ regularly-scheduled EFL classes by their instructors and the second researcher. The pretest was administered at the beginning of the semester (Week 2), while the posttest was given in Week 16. For the tests, students were given the task handouts and reviewed the instructions with the researcher. After asking any clarification questions, the students were given 30 min to plan, compose, and revise their texts individually without the use of any dictionaries or electronic devices. For the practice writing tasks, which were administered in Weeks 4, 8, and 13, the students were given 20 min to complete the background information section, generate ideas, and create an outline. When they were finished, they had 40 min to write their texts and 10 min to complete a self-assessment checklist. The two EFL classes were randomly assigned to either collaborative prewriting (n = 30) or individual prewriting (n = 30). Whereas students in the collaborative prewriting class worked in selfselected pairs to review the background information, brainstorm ideas and complete the outline template and then separated to compose individually, students in the individual prewriting class completed all steps alone. The written texts were read by the second researcher, who provided general comments about the students' content, organization, and language use but did not highlight specific errors or grammatical structures. 2.3. Data coding & analysis To assess the students' writing development in terms of overall quality, the practice tasks and tests were rated by two research assistants using an analytic rubric. The rubric, created by the researchers to reflect the assessment criteria used in the students' EFL class, included four criteria (content, organization, grammar, and vocabulary) that could be scored from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent) yielding a total possible score of 20. Interrater reliability was assessed using a two-way random average-measures intraclass correlation coefficient, which was 0.91, and mean scores were obtained and used in the subsequent analysis. The texts were also assessed in terms of linguistic measures of accuracy by research assistants. Based on prior research that examined linguistic measures of L2 writing using longitudinal or cross sectional designs (Vespoor, Schmid, & Xu, 2012; Yoon & Polio, 2017), accuracy was operationalized as errors per words, with the number of errors determined by the minimal number of corrections necessary to make a phrase or clause error-free. If multiple errors occurred on a single word, such as numerous problems with tense, aspect, mood or verb formation, it was counted as one error. Errors in word choice were included only when the word or expression distorted the meaning. To facilitate the hand coding of errors, Polio and Shea’s (2014) error taxonomy was used along with spelling errors. A subset of the data (10%) was coded by both RAs and interrater reliability for the occurrence of errors was .92 using a two-way mixed average measure intraclass correlation coefficient. Coordination was operationalized as the number of coordinate phrases per clauses and subordination was defined as the number of dependent clauses by clauses, and both variables were identified using Lu's syntactic complexity analyzer (Lu, 2010). Coordinated phrases by clauses was selected because it has been shown to differentiate among proficiency levels (Yoon, 2017), reflect development over time (Bulté & Housen, 2014), and reveal differences in collaborative and individual prewriting in the Thai EFL context (McDonough et al., 2018a). Subordination measured as dependent clause use (i.e., dependent clauses/all clauses) was used because it has differentiated between individual and collaborative prewriting (McDonough et al., 2018a) and between individual and collaborative writing (McDonough et al., 2018b). Although phrasal measures of syntactic complexity have also been used in L2 writing research, only clausal measures were included here as they were most appropriate for the students' proficiency level (Norris & Ortega, 2009). To avoid the possibility of Type 1 error created by running multiple univariate statistical tests on a single dataset (i.e., one test per dependent variable: ratings, accuracy, coordination, and subordination), a MANOVA test was used. To create a single measure for each dependent variable that reflected the students' development over time, gain scores were calculated by subtracting the pretest score from the posttest score. Univariate analyses indicated that the dependent variables were normally distributed across both groups, which suggests that the assumption of multivariate normality is tenable. However, the Box's M test indicated that there was a violation of the assumption of equality of covariance matrices (M = 20.54, p = .04). Therefore, the Pillai statistic is interpreted as it is robust to violations of assumptions when groups have equal size (Field, 2018). Following the omnibus test, discriminate function analysis was used to identify which variables best differentiated between the planning groups. Alpha was set at .05. 3
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Table 1 Mean Scores by Group and Time. Individual prewriting
Ratings Accuracy Coordination Subordination
Collaborative prewriting
Pretest
Posttest
Gain
Pretest
Posttest
Gain
7.92 (3.83) .20 (.10) .31 (.22) .35 (.12)
10.55 (3.48) .19 (.10) .35 (.16) .24 (.10)
2.63 (2.00) −.01 (.09) .03 (.26) −.11 (.11)
9.05 (3.18) .22 (.08) .36 (.18) .38 (.15)
10.37 (2.81) .15 (.06) .38 (.20) .32 (.11)
1.32 (1.76) −.07 (.06) .02 (.24) −.06 (.18)
3. Results The research question asked whether collaborative prewriting facilitates Thai EFL writers' development over time. The mean scores for all four dependent variables by time and group are provided in Table 1 along with the gain scores (standard deviations in parentheses). In terms of text ratings, students in both groups achieved higher scores on the posttests, with the individual prewriting group showing greater gains. In contrast, students in the collaborative prewriting group had larger decreases in their error rates. There were similar increases in coordination and decreases in subordination for both groups. Using Pillai's trace, the MANOVA revealed a significant effect for prewriting group: V = .25, F (4, 55) = 4.68, p = .003, partial η2 = .25. Analysis of the standardized discriminate function coefficients indicated high values for ratings (.78) and accuracy (.77) but low values for coordination (−.15) and subordination (−.17). The overall classification of group membership was 68%, although predicted membership in the individual prewriting group (73%) was slightly higher than the collaborative prewriting group (63%). In sum, the individual prewriting group had greater gains in ratings while the collaborative prewriting group had larger reductions in the error rate (i.e., were more accurate). To establish a link between the students’ test performance and the prewriting conditions, a post-hoc analysis of their analytic ratings and accuracy scores on the three practice writing tasks was examined. Because there were no significant multivariate changes in their use of coordination or subordination over time, the post-hoc analysis focused exclusively on ratings and accuracy. As shown in Table 2, collaborative prewriting had higher accuracy (i.e., lower error rates) than individual prewriting for the writing tasks about climate change and Spartan races. The analytic ratings for individual prewriting were higher for the Facebook and climate change tasks. The effect sizes (Cohen’s d) range from medium (.70) to large (1.00) based on benchmarks for applied linguistics research (Plonsky & Oswald, 2014). In sum, the post-hoc analysis provided evidence that the students’ gains in accuracy (collaborative prewriting) and analytic ratings (individual prewriting) were associated with their performance on two practice writing tasks. 4. Discussion To summarize the findings, the results indicated that individual prewriting resulted in higher analytic ratings, while collaborative prewriting led to improved accuracy. There were no significant differences in coordination or subordination over time. The analytic ratings results provide further evidence that collaborative prewriting may not have any advantages for overall writing quality as compared to individual prewriting, which has been reported in prior studies (McDonough et al., 2018b; Shi, 1998). Although some previous research has reported descriptive (Neumann & McDonough, 2014) or statistically significant benefits (McDonough et al., 2018a) for collaborative prewriting, these studies analyzed the texts produced immediately following the planning activity, as opposed to performance on subsequent writing tasks. Whereas repeated practice carrying out collaborative writing has been shown to help learners individually compose texts over time (Shehadeh, 2011), in this EFL context, collaborative prewriting did not show a Table 2 Ratings and Accuracy by Practice Task and Group. Practice tasks
Individual prewriting
Collaborative prewriting
Statistical comparison
M
SD
M
SD
t
p
d
12.53 .19
2.53 .08
10.22 .16
2.91 .04
2.53 1.25
.016 .223
.85 .47
Climate change (data commentary) Ratings 12.50 Accuracy .25
2.67 .12
9.38 .18
2.88 .06
3.31 2.21
.002 .036
1.12 .74
Spartan races (process) Ratings 11.83 Accuracy .20
3.16 .11
10.47 .13
2.36 .06
1.38 2.17
.176 .038
.49 .79
Facebook (opinion) Ratings Accuracy
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similar impact on analytic text ratings. Instead, it was individual planning practice that helped students improve the overall quality of their subsequent texts. Although individual prewriting had a positive impact on text ratings, collaborative prewriting was facilitative of linguistic accuracy, thereby confirming prior studies that reported accuracy benefits on immediate (McDonough et al., 2018a) and subsequent (Amiryousefi, 2017) writing tasks as compared to individual prewriting conditions. Thus, the improved accuracy generated during the collaborative prewriting practice tasks transferred to the students’ subsequent individual performance on the posttest. The divergent findings from McDonough et al. (2018b), who found no variation in accuracy between collaborative and individual prewriting, may be due to differences in the prewriting task. Whereas they used an unstructured task (i.e., simply told students to brainstorm and discuss ideas), in the current study the writing practice tasks followed the structured format used in prior studies (McDonough et al., 2018a; Neumann & McDonough, 2014), in which students were given more explicit instructions along with graphical tools to assist with the generation and organization of ideas. Thus, to impact L2 writers' accuracy, collaborative prewriting may require structured materials which help students brainstorm ideas and organize their ideas into a writing plan, which may free up their attentional resources to focus on accuracy while writing. Additionally, pairing collaborative prewriting with teacher monitoring (Amiryousefi, 2017) may also have a positive effect on L2 writers’ accuracy. Turning to the null findings for both syntactic complexity measures, prior studies in the Thai EFL context also reported no significant differences in students' immediate use of subordination or coordination following individual or collaborative prewriting (McDonough et al., 2018a, 2018b). However, Amiryousefi (2017) reported advantages for individual planning as compared to both student-led and teacher-monitored collaborative prewriting. The divergent findings may be due to differences in text types, as Amiryousefi examined EFL writers' performance on a letter-writing task (e.g., write a letter to a friend to explain their choice of a holiday destination), while McDonough's studies analyzed problem/solution paragraphs. The tests used in the current study were more similar to problem/solution paragraphs as they also asked students to pose solutions to a social problem through reference to statistical information. The divergent findings suggest that text type or genre may be an important issue to explore in future comparative studies of individual and collaborative prewriting. To conclude, the findings suggest that carrying out practice writing tasks with collaborative prewriting planning may help EFL students produce more accurate texts over time. However, for collaborative prewriting to be beneficial, it may be necessary to scaffold the task by providing explicit instructions and visual tools to facilitate collaboration. The differential benefits of individual prewriting (text ratings) and collaborative prewriting (accuracy) suggest that implementing a variety of prewriting practice tasks may be useful. The accuracy benefits gained through collaborative practice, which carried over to the students’ subsequent individual performance on the posttest, provides evidence that collaborative prewriting may be helpful even in contexts where students are assessed using individual writing tasks. As a preliminary report from a larger study, this short communication focused on the students' test performance. Although the practice writing tasks were reported briefly in a post-hoc analysis, additional analyses are needed to explore interactions among prewriting condition, writing topic, and text types. Furthermore, additional insights will be gained by examining students' interaction while carrying out the collaborative prewriting practice tasks once transcription and interactional analyses are complete. Such analyses might explore the relationship between student talk and text features (e.g., analytic ratings and linguistic measures) and qualitatively examine the learners’ task engagement. By integrating the research tasks into the students' EFL class curriculum (i.e., matching the content focus and paragraph types targeted in the textbook), the study achieved ecological validity but failed to match the level of experimental control associated with laboratory-based research, such as control over the composition of the pairs in the collaborative prewriting group or counterbalancing of the writing tasks. As planning research moves forward by investigating different kinds of individual and collaborative prewriting, it is important to consider factors such as the format and instructions of the prewriting task and the target text type or genre. Of crucial importance is research that explores how repeated opportunities to plan—either individually or collaboratively—impact L2 writers' development over time. Our future research aims to explore this issue in more detail with both preacademic L2 writers such as those investigated here as well as with university students in English-medium universities enrolled in English for Academic Purposes classes. Funding statement Funding for this study was provided by a grant provided to the first author by the Canada Research Chairs program (Grant number 950-231218). Acknowledgments We would like to thank the research assistants for their help with data handling: Roza van Lieshout, Rachael Lindberg, Dana Martin, Phuong Nguyen, and Nora Sargent. We appreciate the assistance of EFL class instructors: Apinan Dechagan, Napasorn Suksawasdi Na Ayudhaya, Bunna Phanjira, and Worawut Ungitpaisarn.
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Appendix A Writing tests • Healthy Living Club Background: You are the president of the Healthy Living club at CMU. Your club is concerned about the health of CMU students, who are having problems with their weight, diabetes and high blood pressure. You were surprised to see how many Thais are overweight compared to people in other Southeast Asian countries (see Fig. A1). Your club did a research project about the causes of obesity in Thailand and discovered these factors (http://www.burning-bison. com/obesity.htm):
• Lack of time to prepare home-cooked meals • Reliance on processed foods, fast food restaurants, boxed/bagged prepared foods • Reduced supervision over children, leading to poor eating habits • Food centric culture, with emphasis on snacks and sweet foods • Poor public parks and indoor recreation facilities • Low interest in doing moderate physical activities daily Your task: Concerned about the information above, the Healthy Living club decided to write a short article (250–300 words) for the student newspaper to give suggestions about how students can be healthy and avoid becoming overweight. In your article, refer to the information in the figure and give suggestions that address at least two of the problems from the bullet list.
Fig. A1. Overweight prevalence (%) in Southeast Asia for both sexes (BMI greater than 25 kg/m2). Source: Unknown, data drawn from WHO Non-Communicable Diseases Country Profiles, 2011
• Communications Club Background: You are the president of the Communications club at CMU. Your club is concerned about the technology use of CMU students, who are increasingly reliant on social media, texting, and other online applications. You were surprised to see how much time Thais spent with media last year (see Fig. A2). Your club did a research project about the problems caused by heavy media use and discovered the list of problems below: (http://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2016/04/30/study-links-heavy-facebook-and-social-media-usage-to-depression/# 1af6930d7e4b):
• Greater likelihood of experiencing depression • Negative feelings about having wasted time on meaningless activities • Envy or jealousy of people whose lives seem perfect • Increased exposure to cyber-bullying • Increased risk of internet addiction • Decreased happiness and good moods Your task: Concerned about the information above, the Communications club decided to write a short article (250–300 words) for the student newspaper to give suggestions about how students can avoid problems with social media use. In your article, refer to the information in the figure and give suggestions that address at least two of the problems from the bullet list.
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Fig. A2. Time spent with media in Thailand (http://tech.thaivisa.com/complete-insight-internet-social-media-usage-thailand/3147/).
References Amiryousefi, M. (2017). The differential effects of collaborative vs. individual prewriting planning on computer mediated L2 writing: Transferability of task-based linguistic skills in focus. Computer-Assistant Language Learning, 30, 766–786. Bulté, B., & Housen, A. (2014). Conceptualizing and measuring short-term changes in L2 writing complexity. Journal of Second Language Writing, 26, 42e65. Ellis, R., & Yuan, P. (2004). The effects of planning on fluency, complexity, and accuracy in second language writing. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 26, 59–84. Field, A. (2018). Discovering statistics using IBM SPSS statistics (5th edition). London: Sage. Flower, L., & Hayes, J. R. (1981). A cognitive process theory of writing. College Composition and Communication, 32, 365–387. Johnson, M. D., & Nicodemus, C. L. (2016). Testing a threshold: An approximate replication of Johnson, Mercado & Acevedo 2012. Language Teaching, 49, 251–274. Johnson, M. D., Mercado, L., & Acevedo, A. (2012). The effect of pre-task planning sub- Journal of processes on L2 writing fluency, grammatical complexity, and lexical complexity. Journal of Second Language Writing, 21, 264–282. Kellogg, R. T. (1996). A model of working memory in writing. In C. M. Levy, & S. Ransdell (Eds.). The science of writing: Theories, methods, individual differences, and applications (pp. 57–71). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Lu, X. (2010). Automatic analysis of syntactic complexity in second language writing. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 15, 474–496. McDonough, K., De Vleeschauwer, J., & Crawford, W. (2018a). Exploring the benefits of collaborative prewriting in a Thai EFL context. Language Teaching Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168818773525 Advance online publication. McDonough, K., De Vleeschauwer, J., & Crawford, W. (2018b). Comparing the quality of collaborative writing, collaborative prewriting, and individual texts in a Thai EFL context. System, 74, 109–120. Neumann, H., & McDonough, K. (2014). Exploring the relationships among student preferences, prewriting tasks, and text quality in an EAP context. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 15, 14–26. Norris, J., & Ortega, L. (2009). Towards an organic approach to investigating CAF in instructed SLA: The case of complexity. Applied Linguistics, 30, 555–578. Ong, J., & Zhang, L. (2010). Effects of task complexity on the fluency and lexical complexity in EFL students’ argumentative writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 19, 218–233. Ong, J., & Zhang, L. (2013). Effects of the manipulation of cognitive processes on EFL writers’ text quality. TESOL Quarterly, 47, 375–398. Plonsky, L., & Oswald, F. (2014). How big is “big”? Interpreting effect sizes in L2 research. Language Learning, 64, 878–912. Polio, C., & Shea, M. (2014). An investigation into current measures of linguistic accuracy in second language writing research. Journal of Second Language Writing, 26, 10–27. Rostamian, M., Fazilatar, A., & Jabbari, A. (2018). The effect of planning time on cognitive processes, monitoring behavior, and quality of L2 writing. Language Teaching Research, 22, 418–438. Shehadeh, A. (2011). Effects and student perceptions of collaborative writing in L2. Journal of Second Language Writing, 20, 286–305.
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Shi, L. (1998). Effects of prewriting discussions on adult ESL students’ compositions. Journal of Second Language Writing, 7, 319–345. Vespoor, M., Schmid, M., & Xu, X. (2012). A dynamic usage based perspective on L2 writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 21, 239–263. Yoon, H. (2017). Linguistic complexity in L2 writing revisited: Issues of topic, proficiency, and construct multidimensionality. System, 66, 130–141. Yoon, H., & Polio, C. (2017). The linguistic development of students of English as a Second Language in two written genres. TESOL Quarterly, 51, 275–301. Yuan, F., & Ellis, R. (2003). The effects of pre-task planning and online planning on fluency, complexity and accuracy in L2 monologic oral production. Applied Linguistics, 24, 1–27. Kim McDonough is a Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Education Department at Concordia University, Canada. Her current research interests include the occurrence and perception of visual cues during task-based interaction and the role of collaboration in L2 writing. Jindarat De Vleeschauwer is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Chiang Mai University, Thailand. Her current research interests involve L2 writing, critical reading, and learning strategies in the Thai EFL setting.
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Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Second Language Writing journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jslw
Comparing the effect of collaborative and individual prewriting on EFL learners’ writing development Kim McDonougha, , Jindarat De Vleeschauwerb ⁎
a b
Concordia University, Canada Chiang Mai University, Thailand
ARTICLE INFO
ABSTRACT
Keywords: L2 writing Collaborative prewriting Analytic ratings Accuracy Coordination Subordination
Despite claims about its potential positive impact on L2 writers' written performance, prewriting planning (i.e., a dedicated time for planning prior to writing) has not demonstrated consistently beneficial effects on linguistic measures of accuracy, fluency, and complexity. Studies that compared individual and collaborative prewriting planning similarly have reported mixed findings. Since most planning studies have not examined how participation in various planning conditions facilitates L2 writers' longer term development, this preliminary report from a larger study compares the pretest-posttest performance of Thai EFL writers (N = 60) who carried out three practice writing tasks over one semester. Whereas half of the students planned individually during the practice tasks, the other students collaboratively planned before separating to compose individually. All students carried out the pretest and posttest individually. Their tests and practice writing tasks were rated using an analytic rubric (content, organization, grammar, and vocabulary) and coded for linguistic measures of accuracy (errors/word), coordination (coordinated phrases/clauses), and subordination (dependent clauses/clauses). The multivariate results indicate that students who had planned individually improved in terms of analytic ratings, while students who had planned collaboratively showed accuracy gains. Findings are situated in terms of prior planning research and areas for future investigation.
1. Introduction Although pretask planning was initially studied in terms of its effect on L2 oral task performance, specifically linguistic dimensions of performance such as accuracy, fluency, and complexity (e.g., Yuan & Ellis, 2003), researchers increasingly have explored its impact on L2 written performance. Through reference to writing models proposed by Flower and Hayes (1981) and Kellogg (1996), researchers have raised the possibility that planning may help L2 writers focus their attention on the various tasks involved in producing a written text, such as setting goals, generating ideas, organizing ideas, and selecting language forms, thereby freeing up attentional resources during the composing process. However, due to the non-linear and recursive nature of writing, it is possible that prewriting planning, which is a period of time dedicated to planning prior to beginning to write (Johnson, Mercado, & Acevedo, 2012), may have little impact on L2 writing because writers can also plan during writing time, which is referred to as online planning (Johnson et al., 2012). Empirical studies that tested the impact of various prewriting and online planning conditions on L2 writers' performance have provided contradictory findings. Whereas a few studies have reported that individual prewriting planning facilitated English L2
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Corresponding author at: 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd W, Education Department, FG 6-151, Montreal, QC H3G 1M8, Canada. E-mail address: [email protected] (K. McDonough).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2019.04.003 Received 3 January 2019; Received in revised form 16 April 2019; Accepted 16 April 2019 1060-3743/ © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article as: Kim McDonough and Jindarat De Vleeschauwer, Journal of Second Language Writing, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2019.04.003
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writers' fluency and syntactic complexity (Ellis & Yuan, 2004; Rostamian, Fazilatar, & Jabbari, 2018), other research has found no advantages for prewriting planning (Ong & Zhang, 2010, 2013). Studies that compared prewriting planning conditions related to content, organization, or goal setting have reported no differences in the lexical or syntactic complexity of essays written by English L1 and L2 students and only a small effect for fluency (Johnson & Nicodemus, 2016; Johnson et al., 2012). Thus, the planning studies to date have provided inconsistent evidence that individual prewriting planning positively impacts L2 writers' performance. Expanding on studies that examined individual planning conditions, researchers have begun to explore the effectiveness of collaborative prewriting. Motivated by claims about the benefits of peer interaction for L2 learning and positive findings for collaborative writing tasks, researchers have investigated whether collaboration during prewriting positively impacts text quality as measured through analytic rubrics or linguistic features. In an early comparative study, Shi (1998) found that there were no differences in the analytic ratings of texts written by ESL students following teacher-led prewriting discussions, peer prewriting discussions, or no discussion. In an EAP context, Neumann and McDonough (2014) reported that English L2 university students wrote paragraphs that received descriptively higher analytic ratings after collaborative prewriting as opposed to individual prewriting; however, it was beyond the scope of their study to compare the rating using inferential statistics. Finally, in an EFL context, McDonough and colleagues (McDonough, De Vleeschauwer, & Crawford, 2018), found collaborative prewriting helped Thai EFL students write problem/solution paragraphs that received higher analytic ratings and were more accurate than paragraphs written by individual planners, but there were no significant differences for syntactic complexity measures (coordination and subordination). However, in a larger study that included a collaborative writing condition (McDonough, De Vleeschauwer, & Crawford, 2018), they found no differences between collaborative and individual prewriting for analytic ratings, accuracy, or subordination. In sum, the comparative studies to date have provided conflicting findings as to whether collaborative prewriting planning has a more positive impact on L2 writers' texts than individual planning. Important questions that have received less attention in planning research are whether any benefits that L2 writers may gain through planning persist over time or whether writers who plan collaboratively experience any benefits when subsequently carrying out individual writing tasks. Although it did not focus specifically on planning, a classroom-based study by Shehadeh (2011) compared the longer term impact of collaborative and individual writing practice on EFL students' writing development over one semester. He found that students who completed collaborative writing tasks throughout the semester received higher individual posttest writing ratings for content, organization, and vocabulary than students who had practiced writing individually. These findings indicate that benefits generated through collaboration may carry over when students subsequently write texts individually; however, the focus there was on collaborative writing as opposed to collaborative prewriting. Focusing specifically on prewriting planning before computer-mediated writing tasks, Amiryousefi (2017) compared teacher-monitored collaborative prewriting, student-led collaborative prewriting or individual planning. One week after carrying out a writing task according to one of the planning conditions, EFL students wrote a similar text without any organized planning. Amiryousefi summarized the findings as showing that students who had experienced teacher-monitored collaborative planning wrote more accurate texts, while those who had planned individually had greater complexity. There were no clear advantages for student-led collaborative planning, although these students did produce more accurate texts than those who had planned individually. Thus, although collaborative writing has been found to positively impact students' individual writing development, any benefits for collaborative prewriting in the absence of teacher monitoring are less clear. In sum, prior studies of individual and collaborative prewriting planning have provided mixed findings as to whether prewriting planning positively impacts L2 writers' overall text ratings or linguistic measures of accuracy, fluency, and complexity. Furthermore, little research has explored whether any immediate benefits of collaborative prewriting facilitate L2 writers' longer-term development. Therefore, to further explore the potential benefits of collaborative prewriting practice on individual writing development, the current study addresses the following research question: Does collaborative prewriting facilitate Thai EFL writers' development over time? Using data from a larger study about collaboration in L2 writing, this short communication focuses exclusively on the L2 writers' development, which was operationalized as changes in text ratings, accuracy, coordination or subordination from pretest to posttest. Due to the limited research that has investigated the developmental effects associated with collaborative prewriting, no predictions were made. 2. Method 2.1. Participants & instructional context The participants were 60 EFL students (31 women, 29 men) enrolled in undergraduate degree programs at a public university in northern Thailand. Their mean age was 19.7 years (SD = 1.2), and they had studied English previously in primary and secondary schools for a mean of 13.9 years (SD = 2.2). The students had never taken any standardized proficiency tests, but they were considered by the English Department to fall within the A2-B1 levels on the Common European Framework of Reference. They were enrolled in two classes (30 students per class) of the same critical reading and writing EFL course that was required for their undergraduate degree. Both classes met for two, 75-minute class periods per week for a total of 30 class periods in a 17-week semester (including holidays and exams). The class targeted all four English language skills, but emphasized critical reading and writing skills. In terms of writing, the course targeted paragraph-level writing skills such as writing introductory and concluding sentences, giving reasons with supporting details, and using discourse markers, and focused on different paragraph types (i.e., descriptive, opinion, data commentary, process, narrative). 2
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2.2. Materials & procedure The materials included two writing tests and three practice writing tasks that complemented the content focus of lessons in the students' theme-based EFL textbook. The tests presented a social issue (obesity or social media use) and provided a figure with statistical information (i.e., obesity levels or social media use in different countries) followed by a short list of problems associated with each issue. The writing prompts asked students to write a short article (250–300 words) for a student newspaper that explained the social issue and posed some solutions to its associated problems. The writing tests are provided in the Appendix. Prior to data collection, the tests were pilot tested with students enrolled in an EFL class at the same university to check for potential topic differences. The pilot test confirmed that the students performed similarly regardless of topic (obesity or social media). The practice writing tasks complemented three lessons about internet and technology, weather and climate, and sports and competition. The specific topics targeted in the writing tasks were Facebook use, climate change, and Spartan races, and each task matched the paragraph type introduced in its corresponding lesson (i.e., opinion, data commentary, and process, respectively). Each task provided some background information about the topic, a graph or table for brainstorming ideas, and a bullet-point outline template. The writing prompts identified a target audience and purpose (e.g., contributing a blog post to the website of the campus environment club) and suggested a word range of 200–250 words. All five writing tasks were administered during the students’ regularly-scheduled EFL classes by their instructors and the second researcher. The pretest was administered at the beginning of the semester (Week 2), while the posttest was given in Week 16. For the tests, students were given the task handouts and reviewed the instructions with the researcher. After asking any clarification questions, the students were given 30 min to plan, compose, and revise their texts individually without the use of any dictionaries or electronic devices. For the practice writing tasks, which were administered in Weeks 4, 8, and 13, the students were given 20 min to complete the background information section, generate ideas, and create an outline. When they were finished, they had 40 min to write their texts and 10 min to complete a self-assessment checklist. The two EFL classes were randomly assigned to either collaborative prewriting (n = 30) or individual prewriting (n = 30). Whereas students in the collaborative prewriting class worked in selfselected pairs to review the background information, brainstorm ideas and complete the outline template and then separated to compose individually, students in the individual prewriting class completed all steps alone. The written texts were read by the second researcher, who provided general comments about the students' content, organization, and language use but did not highlight specific errors or grammatical structures. 2.3. Data coding & analysis To assess the students' writing development in terms of overall quality, the practice tasks and tests were rated by two research assistants using an analytic rubric. The rubric, created by the researchers to reflect the assessment criteria used in the students' EFL class, included four criteria (content, organization, grammar, and vocabulary) that could be scored from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent) yielding a total possible score of 20. Interrater reliability was assessed using a two-way random average-measures intraclass correlation coefficient, which was 0.91, and mean scores were obtained and used in the subsequent analysis. The texts were also assessed in terms of linguistic measures of accuracy by research assistants. Based on prior research that examined linguistic measures of L2 writing using longitudinal or cross sectional designs (Vespoor, Schmid, & Xu, 2012; Yoon & Polio, 2017), accuracy was operationalized as errors per words, with the number of errors determined by the minimal number of corrections necessary to make a phrase or clause error-free. If multiple errors occurred on a single word, such as numerous problems with tense, aspect, mood or verb formation, it was counted as one error. Errors in word choice were included only when the word or expression distorted the meaning. To facilitate the hand coding of errors, Polio and Shea’s (2014) error taxonomy was used along with spelling errors. A subset of the data (10%) was coded by both RAs and interrater reliability for the occurrence of errors was .92 using a two-way mixed average measure intraclass correlation coefficient. Coordination was operationalized as the number of coordinate phrases per clauses and subordination was defined as the number of dependent clauses by clauses, and both variables were identified using Lu's syntactic complexity analyzer (Lu, 2010). Coordinated phrases by clauses was selected because it has been shown to differentiate among proficiency levels (Yoon, 2017), reflect development over time (Bulté & Housen, 2014), and reveal differences in collaborative and individual prewriting in the Thai EFL context (McDonough et al., 2018a). Subordination measured as dependent clause use (i.e., dependent clauses/all clauses) was used because it has differentiated between individual and collaborative prewriting (McDonough et al., 2018a) and between individual and collaborative writing (McDonough et al., 2018b). Although phrasal measures of syntactic complexity have also been used in L2 writing research, only clausal measures were included here as they were most appropriate for the students' proficiency level (Norris & Ortega, 2009). To avoid the possibility of Type 1 error created by running multiple univariate statistical tests on a single dataset (i.e., one test per dependent variable: ratings, accuracy, coordination, and subordination), a MANOVA test was used. To create a single measure for each dependent variable that reflected the students' development over time, gain scores were calculated by subtracting the pretest score from the posttest score. Univariate analyses indicated that the dependent variables were normally distributed across both groups, which suggests that the assumption of multivariate normality is tenable. However, the Box's M test indicated that there was a violation of the assumption of equality of covariance matrices (M = 20.54, p = .04). Therefore, the Pillai statistic is interpreted as it is robust to violations of assumptions when groups have equal size (Field, 2018). Following the omnibus test, discriminate function analysis was used to identify which variables best differentiated between the planning groups. Alpha was set at .05. 3
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Table 1 Mean Scores by Group and Time. Individual prewriting
Ratings Accuracy Coordination Subordination
Collaborative prewriting
Pretest
Posttest
Gain
Pretest
Posttest
Gain
7.92 (3.83) .20 (.10) .31 (.22) .35 (.12)
10.55 (3.48) .19 (.10) .35 (.16) .24 (.10)
2.63 (2.00) −.01 (.09) .03 (.26) −.11 (.11)
9.05 (3.18) .22 (.08) .36 (.18) .38 (.15)
10.37 (2.81) .15 (.06) .38 (.20) .32 (.11)
1.32 (1.76) −.07 (.06) .02 (.24) −.06 (.18)
3. Results The research question asked whether collaborative prewriting facilitates Thai EFL writers' development over time. The mean scores for all four dependent variables by time and group are provided in Table 1 along with the gain scores (standard deviations in parentheses). In terms of text ratings, students in both groups achieved higher scores on the posttests, with the individual prewriting group showing greater gains. In contrast, students in the collaborative prewriting group had larger decreases in their error rates. There were similar increases in coordination and decreases in subordination for both groups. Using Pillai's trace, the MANOVA revealed a significant effect for prewriting group: V = .25, F (4, 55) = 4.68, p = .003, partial η2 = .25. Analysis of the standardized discriminate function coefficients indicated high values for ratings (.78) and accuracy (.77) but low values for coordination (−.15) and subordination (−.17). The overall classification of group membership was 68%, although predicted membership in the individual prewriting group (73%) was slightly higher than the collaborative prewriting group (63%). In sum, the individual prewriting group had greater gains in ratings while the collaborative prewriting group had larger reductions in the error rate (i.e., were more accurate). To establish a link between the students’ test performance and the prewriting conditions, a post-hoc analysis of their analytic ratings and accuracy scores on the three practice writing tasks was examined. Because there were no significant multivariate changes in their use of coordination or subordination over time, the post-hoc analysis focused exclusively on ratings and accuracy. As shown in Table 2, collaborative prewriting had higher accuracy (i.e., lower error rates) than individual prewriting for the writing tasks about climate change and Spartan races. The analytic ratings for individual prewriting were higher for the Facebook and climate change tasks. The effect sizes (Cohen’s d) range from medium (.70) to large (1.00) based on benchmarks for applied linguistics research (Plonsky & Oswald, 2014). In sum, the post-hoc analysis provided evidence that the students’ gains in accuracy (collaborative prewriting) and analytic ratings (individual prewriting) were associated with their performance on two practice writing tasks. 4. Discussion To summarize the findings, the results indicated that individual prewriting resulted in higher analytic ratings, while collaborative prewriting led to improved accuracy. There were no significant differences in coordination or subordination over time. The analytic ratings results provide further evidence that collaborative prewriting may not have any advantages for overall writing quality as compared to individual prewriting, which has been reported in prior studies (McDonough et al., 2018b; Shi, 1998). Although some previous research has reported descriptive (Neumann & McDonough, 2014) or statistically significant benefits (McDonough et al., 2018a) for collaborative prewriting, these studies analyzed the texts produced immediately following the planning activity, as opposed to performance on subsequent writing tasks. Whereas repeated practice carrying out collaborative writing has been shown to help learners individually compose texts over time (Shehadeh, 2011), in this EFL context, collaborative prewriting did not show a Table 2 Ratings and Accuracy by Practice Task and Group. Practice tasks
Individual prewriting
Collaborative prewriting
Statistical comparison
M
SD
M
SD
t
p
d
12.53 .19
2.53 .08
10.22 .16
2.91 .04
2.53 1.25
.016 .223
.85 .47
Climate change (data commentary) Ratings 12.50 Accuracy .25
2.67 .12
9.38 .18
2.88 .06
3.31 2.21
.002 .036
1.12 .74
Spartan races (process) Ratings 11.83 Accuracy .20
3.16 .11
10.47 .13
2.36 .06
1.38 2.17
.176 .038
.49 .79
Facebook (opinion) Ratings Accuracy
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similar impact on analytic text ratings. Instead, it was individual planning practice that helped students improve the overall quality of their subsequent texts. Although individual prewriting had a positive impact on text ratings, collaborative prewriting was facilitative of linguistic accuracy, thereby confirming prior studies that reported accuracy benefits on immediate (McDonough et al., 2018a) and subsequent (Amiryousefi, 2017) writing tasks as compared to individual prewriting conditions. Thus, the improved accuracy generated during the collaborative prewriting practice tasks transferred to the students’ subsequent individual performance on the posttest. The divergent findings from McDonough et al. (2018b), who found no variation in accuracy between collaborative and individual prewriting, may be due to differences in the prewriting task. Whereas they used an unstructured task (i.e., simply told students to brainstorm and discuss ideas), in the current study the writing practice tasks followed the structured format used in prior studies (McDonough et al., 2018a; Neumann & McDonough, 2014), in which students were given more explicit instructions along with graphical tools to assist with the generation and organization of ideas. Thus, to impact L2 writers' accuracy, collaborative prewriting may require structured materials which help students brainstorm ideas and organize their ideas into a writing plan, which may free up their attentional resources to focus on accuracy while writing. Additionally, pairing collaborative prewriting with teacher monitoring (Amiryousefi, 2017) may also have a positive effect on L2 writers’ accuracy. Turning to the null findings for both syntactic complexity measures, prior studies in the Thai EFL context also reported no significant differences in students' immediate use of subordination or coordination following individual or collaborative prewriting (McDonough et al., 2018a, 2018b). However, Amiryousefi (2017) reported advantages for individual planning as compared to both student-led and teacher-monitored collaborative prewriting. The divergent findings may be due to differences in text types, as Amiryousefi examined EFL writers' performance on a letter-writing task (e.g., write a letter to a friend to explain their choice of a holiday destination), while McDonough's studies analyzed problem/solution paragraphs. The tests used in the current study were more similar to problem/solution paragraphs as they also asked students to pose solutions to a social problem through reference to statistical information. The divergent findings suggest that text type or genre may be an important issue to explore in future comparative studies of individual and collaborative prewriting. To conclude, the findings suggest that carrying out practice writing tasks with collaborative prewriting planning may help EFL students produce more accurate texts over time. However, for collaborative prewriting to be beneficial, it may be necessary to scaffold the task by providing explicit instructions and visual tools to facilitate collaboration. The differential benefits of individual prewriting (text ratings) and collaborative prewriting (accuracy) suggest that implementing a variety of prewriting practice tasks may be useful. The accuracy benefits gained through collaborative practice, which carried over to the students’ subsequent individual performance on the posttest, provides evidence that collaborative prewriting may be helpful even in contexts where students are assessed using individual writing tasks. As a preliminary report from a larger study, this short communication focused on the students' test performance. Although the practice writing tasks were reported briefly in a post-hoc analysis, additional analyses are needed to explore interactions among prewriting condition, writing topic, and text types. Furthermore, additional insights will be gained by examining students' interaction while carrying out the collaborative prewriting practice tasks once transcription and interactional analyses are complete. Such analyses might explore the relationship between student talk and text features (e.g., analytic ratings and linguistic measures) and qualitatively examine the learners’ task engagement. By integrating the research tasks into the students' EFL class curriculum (i.e., matching the content focus and paragraph types targeted in the textbook), the study achieved ecological validity but failed to match the level of experimental control associated with laboratory-based research, such as control over the composition of the pairs in the collaborative prewriting group or counterbalancing of the writing tasks. As planning research moves forward by investigating different kinds of individual and collaborative prewriting, it is important to consider factors such as the format and instructions of the prewriting task and the target text type or genre. Of crucial importance is research that explores how repeated opportunities to plan—either individually or collaboratively—impact L2 writers' development over time. Our future research aims to explore this issue in more detail with both preacademic L2 writers such as those investigated here as well as with university students in English-medium universities enrolled in English for Academic Purposes classes. Funding statement Funding for this study was provided by a grant provided to the first author by the Canada Research Chairs program (Grant number 950-231218). Acknowledgments We would like to thank the research assistants for their help with data handling: Roza van Lieshout, Rachael Lindberg, Dana Martin, Phuong Nguyen, and Nora Sargent. We appreciate the assistance of EFL class instructors: Apinan Dechagan, Napasorn Suksawasdi Na Ayudhaya, Bunna Phanjira, and Worawut Ungitpaisarn.
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Appendix A Writing tests • Healthy Living Club Background: You are the president of the Healthy Living club at CMU. Your club is concerned about the health of CMU students, who are having problems with their weight, diabetes and high blood pressure. You were surprised to see how many Thais are overweight compared to people in other Southeast Asian countries (see Fig. A1). Your club did a research project about the causes of obesity in Thailand and discovered these factors (http://www.burning-bison. com/obesity.htm):
• Lack of time to prepare home-cooked meals • Reliance on processed foods, fast food restaurants, boxed/bagged prepared foods • Reduced supervision over children, leading to poor eating habits • Food centric culture, with emphasis on snacks and sweet foods • Poor public parks and indoor recreation facilities • Low interest in doing moderate physical activities daily Your task: Concerned about the information above, the Healthy Living club decided to write a short article (250–300 words) for the student newspaper to give suggestions about how students can be healthy and avoid becoming overweight. In your article, refer to the information in the figure and give suggestions that address at least two of the problems from the bullet list.
Fig. A1. Overweight prevalence (%) in Southeast Asia for both sexes (BMI greater than 25 kg/m2). Source: Unknown, data drawn from WHO Non-Communicable Diseases Country Profiles, 2011
• Communications Club Background: You are the president of the Communications club at CMU. Your club is concerned about the technology use of CMU students, who are increasingly reliant on social media, texting, and other online applications. You were surprised to see how much time Thais spent with media last year (see Fig. A2). Your club did a research project about the problems caused by heavy media use and discovered the list of problems below: (http://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2016/04/30/study-links-heavy-facebook-and-social-media-usage-to-depression/# 1af6930d7e4b):
• Greater likelihood of experiencing depression • Negative feelings about having wasted time on meaningless activities • Envy or jealousy of people whose lives seem perfect • Increased exposure to cyber-bullying • Increased risk of internet addiction • Decreased happiness and good moods Your task: Concerned about the information above, the Communications club decided to write a short article (250–300 words) for the student newspaper to give suggestions about how students can avoid problems with social media use. In your article, refer to the information in the figure and give suggestions that address at least two of the problems from the bullet list.
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Fig. A2. Time spent with media in Thailand (http://tech.thaivisa.com/complete-insight-internet-social-media-usage-thailand/3147/).
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Shi, L. (1998). Effects of prewriting discussions on adult ESL students’ compositions. Journal of Second Language Writing, 7, 319–345. Vespoor, M., Schmid, M., & Xu, X. (2012). A dynamic usage based perspective on L2 writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 21, 239–263. Yoon, H. (2017). Linguistic complexity in L2 writing revisited: Issues of topic, proficiency, and construct multidimensionality. System, 66, 130–141. Yoon, H., & Polio, C. (2017). The linguistic development of students of English as a Second Language in two written genres. TESOL Quarterly, 51, 275–301. Yuan, F., & Ellis, R. (2003). The effects of pre-task planning and online planning on fluency, complexity and accuracy in L2 monologic oral production. Applied Linguistics, 24, 1–27. Kim McDonough is a Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Education Department at Concordia University, Canada. Her current research interests include the occurrence and perception of visual cues during task-based interaction and the role of collaboration in L2 writing. Jindarat De Vleeschauwer is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Chiang Mai University, Thailand. Her current research interests involve L2 writing, critical reading, and learning strategies in the Thai EFL setting.
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