شبكة المعلومات العربية التربوية

The present study investigates the effectiveness of genre-based writing instruction when EFL tertiary-level learners are instructed to produce expository essay in pairs and individually. Studies thus far have found that learners develop their grammar accuracy when writing in pairs. A characteristic of these studies is that the gains of collaborative work are usually measured by outcomes resulting from pair work. The current study differs in that regard, as it set out to provide a text analysis to investigate whether the effects of collaborative practice would also be reflected in individual work after an eight-week long period of collaboration. The participants in the study were 63 intermediate (IELTS 4.0) EFL undergraduate students enrolled in a public college in Oman. Participants were assigned to two experimental groups: one where they performed in pairs (n=20) and the other (n=21) where all practice was individual, while the Control group (n= 22) was taught in a traditional fashion with no reference to genre instruction. Students in the experimental groups were exposed to the expository essay genre, which was deemed relevant for their study and future career. Data for analysis were gathered through written texts at three testing phases: a pretest, an immediate posttest, and a delayed posttest. The students’ written production was analysed for text content and text organisation using a revised analytical rubric, as well as for reduction of narrativity, lexical complexity, and syntactic complexity. Apart from text content and text organization, all variables were operationalized via a number of measures using Coh-Matrix, an advanced automated text analysis tool (McNamara, et al., 2014). Data were also obtained through transcription of learners’ audio-recorded dyadic interactions. Learner interactions were analysed for language related episodes (LREs) to explore how collaboration can assist in completing written tasks. The findings indicated that students in both treatment groups outperformed the Control group in terms of text content, text organisation, and reduction of narrativity. However, only the Pair group outperformed the Control for lexical and syntactic complexity. No difference was found between the experimental groups except for reduction of concreteness; where the Pair group outperformed the Individual group. Analysis of LREs suggested that learner collaboration may assist in completing tasks collaboratively. (Author’s abstract)