Chapter 4
Do task repetition and pretask focus on form instruction impact
collaborative writing performance?
Evidence from young learners
This study examines the influence of task
repetition (TR) and pretask focus on form instruction (FFI) on
written collaborative production. Eighty-five low-proficiency EFL
children carried out a dictogloss task twice: one targeting the 3rd
person singular present “‑s”, and the other aiming at the possessive
determiners “his/her”. Participants were divided into three
different conditions: individual, collaborative, and pretask
FFI + collaborative. Their written output was analyzed for
complexity and accuracy, and overall text quality was gauged with an
analytic rubric. The results did not reveal an advantage for the
collaborative groups over the individuals. However, TR and
collaboration increased grammatical accuracy while pretask FFI
appeared to foster more accurate use of the target forms.
Pedagogical and research implications are discussed.
Article outline
- Introduction
- Literature review
- Collaborative vs individual L2 writing
- Task repetition
- Pretask focus on form instruction
- Methods
- Materials
- The DG texts
- The pretask FFI
- Procedure
- Analysis
- Results
- Discussion
- Conclusion
-
Notes
-
References
-
Appendix
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