Post for Tuesday, Feb 14 class on Storch and Aldosari
By
what mechanisms can collaborative composing contribute to language learning?
How does the activity of collaborative writing compare to the activity of composing
aloud? What are the strengths and
weaknesses of this study, including the relationship classification?
This article is a worth reading research because it addresses the myths of pair work, which builds my theoretical knowledge in pair work and informs me of how to pair students up in my own multi-level classroom. It is very interesting to know that the amount of knowledge gained from pair work does not only come from the paired writers’ proficiency levels, it also relies on the patterns of interaction emerged between them. Low proficiency level students could benefit to either a great extent or not, depending on the equality and mutuality shared by them and their peers. The result is valuable but stunning at the same time for which it leaves the pairing strategies and trainings onto teachers. First, teachers should inform students of the purpose of the pair work. Second, teachers should know students very well, even their personality traits. Given the ultimate purpose of the pair work, students should be trained to be “good citizens” of the class (this sounds ironic at the same time). In other words, collaborative writing can result in either inductive or deductive writing processes.
ReplyDeleteI would love to see how participants in this study perceive themselves in the pair work and their goal for doing this activity. Their perceptions can be compared with their roles and interactions demonstrated in the recording. This information can inform researchers of many hidden aspects behind what can be observed from the research site. It will provide invaluable knowledge to both researchers and teachers of how to group students into pair work.
One thing I really love about this article is the statistic forms which explain the results very clearly. The rich information in those forms also reveal another strength of the study, that the authors compare and analyze different groups of students in an in-depth manner. Now, I have a clear understanding of the amount of LREs and L2 turns, the focus of LREs, the negotiated goals of doing pair work, and the relationship of LREs among different patterns of interactions. Pair work is not merely pairing language proficiency; it is pairing sociocultural interactions as well.
The collaborative writing differs from composing aloud in several ways. For instance, collaborative writing involves sociocultural interaction and comprehensive input. Individual writer is responsible to contribute and negotiate the writing piece. They construct the text together and do not have the entire control of the flow (unless in dominant-passive interaction). In some cases, accuracy can be improved through pair writing. However, composing aloud increases accuracy, but creates reactivity at the same time. Instead of negotiating with peers, writers need to negotiate with themselves and sometimes with thinking out aloud/languaging. Composing aloud is more a monitored writing.
Fang, I love your suggestion that student perceptions of how they see themselves and each other and what they see as the goal of the activity to be. I think that could have significantly deepened the findings.
DeleteI believe that Storch and Aldosari make a good case for collaborative writing all along the study. According to these authors, collaborative composing does contribute with language learning, because it makes students pay closer attention to language use. It also gives FL students more opportunities to participate and make use of language, as opposed to language use during teacher-fronted classes. However, collaborative writing might be beneficial for students only under certain circumstances, depending on their proficiency level, the proficiency level of their interlocutor, and the kind of relationship they form during the collaboration (not surprisingly, low proficiency, passive students didn’t produce much L2). I agree with Fang that the study is very interesting, and the results were not what I was expecting either.
ReplyDeleteI believe that, if we compared composing aloud to collaborative writing, we could say that students have the language awareness in both situations, and oral production may interfere with thought. Nevertheless, the main difference is that, regardless of proficiency level, there is a second person contributing with the task. That person may affect the L2 production in a positive or a negative way, and even dominate the task. Students are expected to collaborate and write together, while “languaging” in order to solve linguistic problems. During composing aloud, students may have the opportunity to resort to “languaging” but he/she will not have the peer to either clarify or correct the language issue with them. The student has to make all decisions by themselves, and might even reinforce fossilization.
When it comes to strengths, I found particularly useful the backgrounds the provided: on the topic and on the instructional context. I also think that having analyzed patterns of interaction, as well as proficiency pairing on top of production of LREs made the study more valuable. When I started reading, I kept thinking about personality types (“but what if one of them is very proficient but also very shy?”), and the authors answered my question by using the patterns of interaction. I also found the excerpts very useful to understand what they were talking about. When it comes to weaknesses, besides the limitations they mention at the end of the paper, I wondered if the students’ behavior changed or was affected by the fact that they knew they were being recorded. I also wondered if the students were told whether the final product was going to be evaluated or not, and if the interactions would change if this task would affect their grades somehow. I also wish they had interviewed the students and asked them their opinion on the activity. (Maybe the larger study they mention also includes language learning?)
Looking at the literature review and the findings of Storch and Aldosari’s (2012) study it appears that collaboration can have some beneficial implications for language learning. Like Fang mentioned, it has the potential to expand knowledge regarding the use of pair work, how pairs are assigned, and perhaps that knowledge can ease some concerns about L1 use (which was not a hurdle in this study due to no true beginners). To begin with collaboration provides more opportunities to use a wider range of language for different functions (e.g. making suggestions, counter-suggestions, clarifying, providing explanations) and it can allow space to make corrections either through the help of a partner or through self-correction. Also, the findings indicate that collaboration has the potential to help all proficiency levels, even when the pairs are mixed. That is of course as long as the interaction is actually collaborative rather than expert/novice or dominant/passive.
ReplyDeleteComparing collaborative writing to composing aloud is interesting because they both have the goal of learning to write and perhaps correction mistakes, but both are very different processes. Collaborative writing is appealing to me because I often approach things with a sociocultural framework and it provides an opportunity for interaction where writers can learn from each other and use each’s strengths and mistakes. I also wonder if this might work well with heritage learners because they are essentially verbalizing what they intend to write like the compose aloud. I also think that collaborative writing might be less “weird” and might not require time and practice to get used to it. However, I still feel a bit hesitant to compare the two because I feel as though they might be measuring different things (but I cannot quite place what those might be).
As for the strengths, I agree with Claudia that the variety of background information helped me better understand why the study was being conducted and what some of positive implications might be. Additionally, as someone who is currently reading Foucault and often lost in his concepts, I found I truly appreciated the organization and clarity of the whole article. Also similar to Claudia, I too wondered about personality types, but I also wondered about the personal relationship of the participants and their different backgrounds. For me this was one weakness. I kept wondering if the influence of collaborative work was due to other factors like if there were introverts or extroverts, how they felt about their partner, did the recording change behavior, or if there was something in their background that had trained them to do collaborative work.
I hear you, Rocky, I was also really thinking about additional and potentially confounding factors. Although I was impressed with the quantity of variables they undertook to study and the ways they combined and analyzed them, there might be (probably are!) other variables that impact what they are finding in significant ways. I guess they kind of present figuring this out as potential future research when they mention that there are other variables not included in the current study that are also being investigated. And I'm glad they stated so clearly that the findings need to be interpreted cautiously, lest a teacher decide this is the final word on the subject. Interesting for teachers to think about, to be sure, though.
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ReplyDeleteBecause meaningful interaction facilitates language learning, Storch and Aldosari (2012) frame their study in the belief that “group and pair work may provide learners with an improved quantity and quality of L2 practice” (p. 32). Educational theorists have referred to this mechanism as: the Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky), scaffolding (Wood, Bruner, and Ross), dialogic (Cazden), and, as Fang pointed out scholars use the terms, input and interaction in ESL/ Applied Linguistics in order to describe learning that takes place through meaningful human interaction.
ReplyDeleteWhereas the activity of thinking aloud was individual in that my brain contributed entirely to the cognitive load of the output, collaborative writing involves two people working together to co-construct a product neither individual could have produced alone. For me, the strength of this study lies in its emphasis on learning through interaction. I’m especially interested in what Donato (1994) called “collective scaffolding,” and I wonder what other terms researchers have used to talk about learning that takes place in interactions between adults?
Storch and Aldosari (2012) helped me to think about my own coding process. I like the way they coded their data for patterns of interaction (p. 37). Using a model Storch developed in her 2002 and 2009 publications, they coded in terms of equality (“level of contribution and control over the task”) and mutuality (“level of engagement with each other’s contributions”) (p. 37). Building on Swain and Lapkin (1998), Storch and Aldosari segment their data into language-related episodes (LREs), or “episodes where learners attend to language use” (p. 33). I wonder if LREs might be a useful way for me to start segmenting my data? I also wonder about the ways that other researchers identify collaboration in transcripts?
I think Fang is right that participants’ perceptions of their interactions could add depth to this study. I wonder if member checking the coding might be a way to improve the trustworthiness of the study? In addition to Claudia and Rocky’s curiosity about the extent to which personality type and factors might influence interaction, I’d like to know more about the socio-cultural context these interactions took place in. My Saudi students believed it was stronger students’ duty to help their weaker classmates. I believe doing so is emphasized in the Koran.
This article made me wonder about the extent to which I should include research on dyad relationships in classroom contexts to my research on dyads in a writing center?
Carrie, I am really interested in hearing more about how this compares to what you, and your husband, may have noticed in Saudi. Did they expect the more proficient students to actually help or to provide the answers? Do you think there would have been a difference in the research if it were addressing women or mixed groups?
DeleteCollaborative composing contributes to language learning by promoting longer LREs across a broader range of communicative functions, more comparable to the real world than what tends to happen in teacher-fronted classes. Storch & Aldosari point out that this is particularly important in FL classrooms where students don’t have opportunities to practice outside of class. Students working with similar proficiency levels can potentially engage in “collective scaffolding”—pooling their resources to solve problems.
ReplyDeleteThe discussion on language use tasks was particularly interesting. The authors suggest that H-H collaborative pairings might be best for high proficiency students, while H-L collaborative or expert/novice pairings might work best for low proficiency students, since high proficiency students could expose them to a variety of responses and offer corrections. They also suggest that high proficiency students might benefit from stepping into this teaching role, though I found the only support they offered for this perplexing.
Regarding dominant/passive relationships, it seems intuitive that they would not be positive, particularly for low proficiency students, and it seems to me that this type of relationship counteracts the point of pair work in the first place, since for the low proficiency student it probably ends up feeling like a teacher fronted class, and the high proficiency student, who is dominating the conversation, not taking their partner’s contributions into account, and doing all the work, might as well be working independently.
STRENGTHS: Major takeaways—not just proficiency pairings should be considered; patterns of interaction and activity type also need to be taken into account. Also, prevalent concerns about L1 use in pair work are not supported by this study. I appreciate how Storch & Aldosari built from other studies, focusing on unresolved (mixed results or under-researched) questions. Overall, the study was well planned, the article was easy to follow, especially considering the high # of variables. I like how they used excerpts to illustrate the variables before getting into the findings, and they did a nice job of summing things up in the conclusion, offering implications as well as pointing out weaknesses.
WEAKNESSES: Aside from the ones they point out themselves, I would have liked to hear more about future research. They mention other factors that have been explored (learner’s goals and perception of partners’ proficiency), but this is the closest they come to offering suggestions. I like Judy Liskin-Gallardo’s suggestion that these dyadic interaction types might be more fluid than this study seems to imply. Maybe something longitudinal could get at that question. Or what about swapping pairs mid-study, to see if that might shed more light on the way these dyadic relationships function?
In the article of Storch and Aldosari I have seen the mechanism for collaborative writing because it makes L2 students to concentrate more during writing. Students get the opportunity to give their contributions in the group and they can also figure out their mistakes. It also helps students to increase their knowledge by working together. The article explains how to pair students in the class. Assigning L2 leaner’s to work together in small groups or pairs they are more likely to use L2 for arrange of functions like making decisions. Although this activity might work for some functions depending on the student’s level whether it is H-H, H-L or L-L. I prefer students pairing themselves rather than me paring them.
ReplyDeleteIt is not easy to compare collaborative writing with think aloud but both focus on writing. In think aloud an individual person thinks and put the ideas into writing. I think Collaborative writing is interesting because people can work together to solve a problem using their knowledge and put their work in writings. As a teacher I love students to work in groups that make them feel comfortable. This might make a positive impact to L2 students. T
I agree with Claudia and Rocky on the variety of background. It helps understand why the study has been done and the impacts. I am concerned about the behaviors’ of the students and their relationship which can affect the activity due to the fact that some students can work well with others and some do not collaborate with other students since some students are high and others are low.
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ReplyDeleteBased on the sociocultural theoretical perspective, Storch and Aldosari (2012) showed how ‘collective scaffolding’ is occurred through peer interaction for their language learning (p.32). I think that the value of the collaborative composing relates to how learners interacted through writing. For this reason, the value of the interaction which occurs in writing would be different by the type of the collaboration happens. Since I mentioned in the class that the composing aloud can affect by the learners’ language proficiency, the activity of composing aloud can be maximized when the learners can say what they want to write. Speaking aloud can be beneficial when learners have certain language ability. However, collaborative writing is affected by proficiency in a smaller degree than speaking aloud. In terms of pairing in collaborative writing, I think that students’ L1 and usage in their interaction and their proficiency in L2 can become the main concerns for teachers to pair students.
ReplyDeleteThe strengths of this study are the various examples of the interaction between H-H and H-L and L-L pairs that they provide. The interesting finding was that the length of the L2 turn with high proficiency learners since they produce longest turns when they paired with lower proficiency learners. However, the lower proficiency group produce the longest L2 turns when they worked collaboratively. This shows ideas especially for lower proficiency groups what we need to consider when we choose the activity of collaborative writing. Depending on the purpose of the class (e.g. fluency vs. accuracy), teachers need to consider their learners’ proficiency and how each group produces their L2 turns when organizing the groups.
I’m not sure if this is weakness but I wonder how they classify the proficiency group (e.g. high and low), which criteria that they use, and how the gap between high and low groups since I found that the high proficiency group also made grammatical mistakes in their conversation (e.g. “keep heath good”). In addition, I also how they categorized the intermediate group (criteria) because the authors mentioned that this the class had heterogeneous English proficiency.