Carola Strobl
Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
carola.Strobl@UGent.be
Academic Writing in a Foreign Language: Learning to Elaborate
Instead of Copy-Paste through Online Collaboration
Bio data
Carola Strobl
is a Research Assistant at the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy of Ghent
University. She has a teaching career as a German lecturer at universities in Germany,
Italy, Portugal, and Belgium, and has been involved in several research projects on
technology-enhanced language learning. Currently, she is writing her dissertation entitled
“Exploring the possibilities of online scaffolding for L2 academic wri
ting in individual and
collaborative settings”.
Abstract
Synthesis writing from multiple sources in a foreign language challenges the writing
strategies of novice writers. Students need to cognitively engage with the content of the
source texts instead of copy-pasting fragments to produce an effective synthesis (Solé et
al., 2013). They also have to broaden the focus of their linguistic attention from word
and sentence level towards text level in order to produce a coherent synthesis (Paulus,
1999). Online peer collaboration can help students to master these challenges by pooling
their cognitive and linguistic resources. Furthermore, the collaborative task setting
fosters content discussion and reader-orientation (Blin & Appel, 2011).
For this collaboration to be effective, students need to be scaffolded in the collaborative
process (Slavin, 1992). This study sets out to investigate what type of instructional
support works best for this specific task and target public, advanced foreign language
students in higher education. The two instructional methods that were used to support
the online collaboration are
scripting
and
observational learning
. Both instruments have
been shown to foster effective results in Computer Supported Collaborative Learning
(Rummel et al., 2009).
To measure their effect on online synthesis writing, a three-weeks intervention study was
set up, implementing a cross-sectional design: In the "script-first" condition (n=34), the
collaborative triads followed a collaboration script in week two and watched a model
video of an online collaboration in week three, and vice-versa in the "model-first"
condition (n=42). The collaboration process was recorded using screencast software, and
analysed with regard to efficiency (work flow) and effectiveness (focus and/or success of
interactions). Attitude questionnaires and focus group interviews served to triangulate
the observational data.
The analysis results shed new light on the effect of instructional support. Attention to
content elaboration and text level concerns increased throughout the intervention, but to
a different degree for the two groups: The triads in the “model
-
first” condition benefited
more from the instructional support. This finding is corroborated by higher ratings
regarding the usefulness of the instructional support given by the participants in this
condition.
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2014 CALL Conference
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