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From the outset of the 21st century, many countries around the world have increasingly adopted ideas to integrate technology and web-based tools into the educational systems. This has led to the upgrowth of new approaches to build learning environments, which has also supported the development of learners’ language skills and abilities. For example, Google Docs is considered as an emergent web-based tool that is increasingly used in EFL collaborative writing contexts.
This research study presents an investigation, from a socio-cognitive perspective, into how technology and collaboration may support EFL writing performance of undergraduate Algerian students. Central to this investigation is the role of the students to contribute to each other’s EFL writing performance through providing feedback. The study was conducted over four months in an online environment outside the classroom boundaries, as a non-assessed extra-curricular activity. A mixed-methods design was employed, consisting of 32 undergraduate participants, females and males, with mixed abilities, of the same degree (first year bachelor) studying English as a foreign language, at a university in a southwest region in Algeria. In addition to interviews and a preliminary questionnaire, eight types of writing tasks were designed, in a process-genre based approach, to be completed in Google docs (via Google sites). Data from the preliminary questionnaire demonstrated the participants’ positive appreciation towards the integration of technology in the learning process. Analysis of the participants’ texts revealed that the students respected the instructions and the structure allocated for each task, with students’ writing mistakes reduced as they incorporated peers’ comments into their subsequent revised drafts. However, the majority of the peer feedback and the reviews concentrated on surface level features of the written texts. Both interviews, text-based and semi-structured interviews, indicated that the online collaborative writing tasks and experience were generally perceived as useful. The participants also expressed awareness about the relationship between the utility of peer feedback—effective and non-effective—and their written outcome. These findings highlighted how and why a web-based platform (Google Docs) can be an effective pedagogical tool, along with collaboration and peer feedback, for supporting EFL writing performance in a similar context.
Recommendations address training and planning to facilitate implementation of online collaboration (technology), peer feedback, and the process-genre approach in EFL writing. |
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