The Effect of Collaborative Summary Writing on EFL Students’ Language Development

This study investigated the effect of Collaborative Summary Writing on EFL students’ second language development. The participants of the current study were 60 EFL students in two intact classes who were passing a writing course. In the experimental group, teacher explained about the summary writing and students were supposed to write their summaries in class collaboratively by the help of their peers and teacher. All papers were checked by the teacher and they discussed about the received feedback in class. However, in the control group students wrote their summaries at home and the next session they got teacher written corrective feedback on their paper. The first summary was used as the pre-test and the last summary was used as the post-test in both groups. Writing score was determined by a holistic rating procedure that included content, organization, grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics. Results of the study showed that students in the experimental group who received collaborative summary writing outperformed the students in the control group in summary writing. In addition, it was observed that students’ writing ability improved significantly in terms of content, organization, and vocabulary, but not for grammar or mechanics. At the end, a number of theoretical and pedagogical implications for further research have been presented.

Keywords:

EFL , Collaboration , Summary Writing , Writing Development