Wiki-mediated collaboration and its association with L2 writing development: an exploratory study

Abstract

Prior research has shown that EFL learners who wrote collaboratively with partners using wikis improved the content quality and language accuracy of their L2 individual writing more than students who wrote individually. Drawing on the dataset from Hsu and Lo's study, the current study explores the nature of the students’ collaborative dialogue that occurred during wiki collaborative writing and the potential link between wiki collaboration and development in individual L2 writing. The students, working in self-selected groups, collaboratively completed a writing task with two drafts via wikis. Wiki pages created by the students, including the comments, discussion and history modules, were analysed for the occurrence of content-, organization- and language-related episodes. The total number, focus and resolution of the episodes were tallied and analysed. Results of the quantitative and qualitative analyses showed that (1) students produced significantly more language-related episodes than content-related and organization- related ones, (2) organization-related episodes occurred the least frequently, (3) students were able to resolve the majority of the content-, organization-, and language-related issues successfully and (4) students demonstrated a preference to work with grammar over lexis during wiki-mediated collaborative writing process. The results are discussed in the light of Hsu and Lo's study. Theoretical and pedagogical implications are discussed.

Keywords:

• Wiki
• collaborative writing
• collaborative dialogue
• second language writing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 In Hsu and Lo (2018), content and organization were assessed on an eight-point analytical scale. Content was evaluated in terms of development of the thesis, coverage of the topic, relevance of details and the conclusion of main points, while organization was evaluated for fluency of expression (i.e. how smoothly ideas were connected) as well as organization and sequencing of ideas. Language complexity was measured by mean number of clauses per T-unit, mean length of T-unit, lexical variety (index of Guiraud) and lexical sophistication. Language accuracy, on the other hand, was indexed by weighted clause ratio (WCR) (Foster & Wigglesworth, 2016). Clauses were first assigned to one of four levels (entirely accurate, Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3) based on their error gravity (i.e. how seriously errors compromised comprehension) and received an accuracy score of 1.00, 0.80, 0.50 and 0.10, respectively. WCR was calculated by adding the total clause ratings for an essay and dividing the sum by the total number of clauses. The higher the WCR, the more the accuracy of the essay.

2 Development on individual L2 essay writing was operationalized in Hsu and Lo (2018) as the improvement in content, organization and language from pre- to post-test individual essay writing.

3 Topics selected include European refugee crisis, Reasons for divorce in Taiwan, Effects of staying up late, Stray dog issue in Taiwan, Effects of smartphones on teenagers, Benefits of eating organic foods and Effects of low birth rate in Taiwan.

4 Maximum three weeks for Draft 1 and two weeks for Draft 2.

5 The instructor only indicated that something was wrong with the text (e.g. ungrammatical, unclear sentences) but did not provide any direct corrections. Feedback was provided for two reasons: (1) this composition course adopted a process writing approach; thus, feedback was needed to facilitate revision processes and (2) feedback was provided for an ethical reason: the students took the course to improve their writing, and it is only ethical to provide feedback to facilitate the learning process.

6 There were two types of unresolved LREs: (1) one containing problems that remained unresolved and existed in the essay and (2) one containing problems to which the avoidance strategy was applied (i.e. the problematic sentence was later deleted because the participants acknowledged that something was wrong but did not know how to deal with it). In the current study, they were both coded into the same category of unresolved LREs.

7 In addition to the 341 learner–learner collaborative dialogues, a total of 476 (M = 39.67, SD =31.03, ranging from 16 to 102) history pages were generated by the 12 wiki groups. A history page was created when revisions were made on the text, and the page was saved. Thus, one history page could contain several revisions. However, the number of times revisions were made on content, organization and language were not calculated in this study since it is out of the scope.

8 To provide some indication of the meaningfulness of the observed significant differences in the data, following Sauro and Smith (2010), effect sizes (r) were calculated by dividing the relevant z score by the square root of N (N = the number of wiki groups). An effect size of r = 0.10 was defined as small, r = 0.30 as medium and r = 0.50 or larger as large.

9 The decision was made based on Swain and Lapkin’s (1998) and Kim’s (2009) definitions of grammatical and lexical LREs. Based on Swain and Lapkin’s (1998) definitions, grammatical LREs were defined as LREs in which students discussed grammatical features of the L2, including verb tenses, word order, preposition use and so on. Lexical LREs, on the other hand, involved students seeking L2 vocabulary, choosing among competing L2 vocabulary items or discussing the spelling of lexical items (Kim, 2009; Swain & Lapkin, 1998).

10 These examples were taken from the data of the current study.

11 One of the reviewers suggested that personal style may have a role to play in the way learners collaborated with each other during the wiki writing process. This constitutes another interesting area that deserves further investigation.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Office of Research and Development, Chung Yuan Christian University [107011101/107011102].

Notes on contributors

Hsiu-Chen Hsu

Hsiu-Chen Hsu is an associate professor in the Department of Applied Linguistics and Language Studies at Chung Yuan Christian University, Taiwan. Her research focuses on exploring second language learning processes, task-based language teaching and learning, and collaborative writing within the context of computer-mediated communication.