Weraporn Carmesak. Student Behaviors in Cooperative L2 Writing. Master's Degree(Applied Linguistics for English Language Teaching). King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi. KMUTT Library.. : King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi, 2009.
Abstract:
This classroom-based research study was conducted in order to investigate the process
when students engage in cooperative writing, as well as to find out what are the roles
and the amount of contribution of each member while doing writing tasks in groups.
The participants in this study were four undergraduate students studying in the Department
of Microbiology of the Faculty of Science at King Mongkut's University of
Technology Thonburi. All of them were enrolled in LNG 102, Fundamental English II
in the same class, and worked in the same groups for cooperative writing tasks.
The instruments used for data collection were video recording of the students' group writing,
the students' written tasks, the task record forms, and the semi-structured retrospective group interviews.
The subjects were assigned to do a cooperative writing task and the whole process of
their writing was recorded on video. After finishing the task, the subjects were asked to record their roles
and contributions into the task record form. Then, the data from the video recordings
and the task record forms were analyzed in order to study their writing processes
as well as their roles and contributions while doing the cooperative writing task.
The findings in this study reveal that the subjects worked cooperatively and show that their cooperative
writing processes were similar to typical writing processes. To compose the text, they went through prewriting,
drafting, revising, and editing stages recursively. Every subject had a role to play. There were six roles found
in this study: a group leader, a planner, an idea generator, a scribe, a language facilitator, and a proofreader.
Though throughout the working processes, all subjects had roles to play, each one contributed to the task differently.
The findings show that the factors which affected different levels of contributions were English proficiency, learning style, and experience in doing group work.
The implications of this study suggest how to facilitate and motivate learners to do cooperative writing tasks cooperatively and effectively.