Collaborative Writing in L2: The Effect of Group Interaction on Text Quality

This chapter investigates the role of group interaction in L2 writing. It is assumed that text quality in L2 is positively affected by collaborative dialogue. When learners are given the opportunity to reconstruct a text together, which has been read to them by their teacher, their joint product will be better than an individual reconstruction. In order to test this hypothesis, three groups of L2 learners of English, Dutch, and Italian were submitted to a dictogloss task. The focus of the study was on the grammatical and lexical complexity of the text produced by the learners and on the linguistic strategies they used during the text reconstruction phase. However, a positive effect of interaction could not be established. This may partly be due to the cross-sectional design of the study. Other factors which may have had an impact on the obtained results are also discussed, such as level of L2 proficiency, difficulty of the text, group dynamics and the general problem of measuring the role of interaction in L2 writing. In the final section of the chapter it is suggested that a qualitative analysis of the discussions between the learners might shed some light on the benefits of a collaborative writing task like dictogloss.