One Hand Washes the Other and Both Wash the Face: Individuality versus Collaboration in L2 Writing

Abstract

The aim of this pre-experimental study is twofold: (1) to investigate the comparative effectiveness ofindividual, pair, and group writing conditions in L2 writing classes, and (2) to explore students’perceptions about each of these conditions. The participants were university-level Turkish EFL learnersstudying in the English Preparatory Program of a state university. The data for investigating theeffectiveness of these writing conditions came from in-class paragraph writing tasks whereas students’perceptions were investigated through an open-ended questionnaire and semi-structured focus groupinterviews. The quantitative data were analyzed by running descriptive statistics analysis, Wilcoxonsigned-rank test, and the Friedman test, and the qualitative data were content analyzed. As the findingsindicated, when the participants wrote in groups they outperformed those who worked individually or inpairs regarding the (a) fluency, (b) accuracy, (c) complexity, (d) length, and (e) overall score of theparagraphs. Besides, perceived advantages and disadvantages of both collaborative writing (i.e., pair andgroup writing) and individual writing were pointed out by the participants. Based on the findings, somepedagogical implications and suggestions for further research are presented.© 2019 EJAL & the Authors. Published by Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics (EJAL). This is an open-accessarticle distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY-NC-ND)(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).