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Article

Open Access

The Contrary Effect of Collaborative Writing on ESL Students’ Vocabulary Acquisition

Author(s)

Elnaz Valaei Bakhshayesh

Full-Text PDF Download XML 785 Views

DOI:10.17265/2159-5526/2016.03.005

Affiliation(s)

Arab Open University, Muscat, Oman

ABSTRACT

Writing task is an integral part of education in ESL (English as a Second Language) at the foundation level. It has been observed that foundation level 3 students of Arab Open University have an insufficient knowledge of vocabulary which is reflected on their writing, as their usage of vocabulary is confined to a number of limited common words. This research explores the effect of collaborative writing on students’ vocabulary acquisition. All the writing tasks were related to educational topics in order to provide students with the lexical items related to the same subject. This study took place in one of the foundation level 3 classes at Arab Open University, Oman branch. Fourteen anonymous Arab students for whom English is considered as the second language participated in this study. All students are in the intermediate level of English language proficiency. For each writing task, five collocations were selected to be taught in the class over a period of five weeks. The achieved outcomes revealed contrary results to the previous studies that had shown the effective impact of collaborative writing. This study has discussed the contrary impact of collaborative writing on improving the learners’ vocabulary acquisition in addition to the challenges students faced during collaborative writing task. Finally, this research provides recommendations for the effective collaborative writing in the foundation students’ language proficiency.

KEYWORDS

Collaborative writing, L2 vocabulary acquisition, challenges

Cite this paper

Sociology Study, March 2016, Vol. 6, No. 3, 196-203

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