College Students’ Expectations and Improvements about Writing via a Student Writing Club

This study aimed at investigating L2 students’ writing expectations and improvements in a student writing club. Twelve students specializing in English Education at a university in Jeonbuk Province were served as participants for this study. Primary data from two surveys, interviews, and three writing tests were analyzed to demonstrate the students’ improvements through the writing club, and supplementary data, such as email exchanges, periodical oral conversations, and all of the documents on their Internet site, were served to understand the context of the writing club. The research findings showed that the writing club helped the students to have numerous learning benefits, such as writing habit, confidence, critical thinking, better awareness of audience, reading ability, extended background knowledge, learning transfer, strategies in peer feedback, and progress in writing, to just name a few. It is also implied that a collaborative writing group, whether it is classroombased or studentinitiated, is so practical that writing practitioners can promote learners’ writing advancement. (Kyungil University)

Yu, Ho-Jung “College Students’ Expectations and Improvements about Writing via a Student Writing Club.” Modern Studies in English Language and Literature 57.4 (2013): 341-73 This study aimed at investigating L2 students’ writing expectations and improvements in a student writing club Twelve students specializing in English Education at a university in Jeonbuk Province were served as participants for this study Primary data from two surveys, interviews, and three writing tests were analyzed to demonstrate the students’ improvements through the writing club, and supplementary data, such as email exchanges, periodical oral conversations, and all of the documents

on their Internet site, were served to understand the context of the writing club The research findings showed that the writing club helped the students to have numerous learning benefits, such as writing habit, confidence, critical thinking, better awareness of audience, reading ability, extended background knowledge, learning transfer, strategies in peer feedback, and progress in writing, to just name a few It is also implied that a collaborative writing group, whether it is classroom-based or student-initiated, is so practical that writing practitioners can promote learners’ writing advancement (Kyungil University)

Key Words: L2 writing, collaborative learning, peer feedback, writing process, student

writing club

I Introduction

L2 writing instruction has its own history According to Matsuda (2006), L2 writing instruction started from controlled composition

* This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded

by the Korean Government (NRF-2012S1A5A8023937)

whose focus was to make error-free sentences in the era that the audio-lingual method of language learning was prevailing Writing as sentence-level structure was shifted to discourse-level writing where different rhetorical structures, such as narration, comparison and contrast, or process analysis, were explored and practiced After the trend, L2 writing instruction was shifted toward the process of writing, roughly characterized as pre-writing, writing, and post-writing, but specifically the process can be much more complex according to varying methods in each step Finally, the notion of writing in context, called genre-based writing, appeared in the field of L2 writing This historical notion does not fade away, but it becomes more dynamic since L2 writing practitioners need to apply all of the above instructional notions for their own instruction according to levels and writing goals L2 writing has been constant attention in L2 writing practitioners and researchers, as learning writing is considered as learning the mode of communication

Along with the growing interest in L2 writing instruction, research has been exponentially increased in number and in type Since the number of research publications began to ballon around the early 1990s (Leki, Cumming, & Sliva, 2008), the research interest has covered L2 writing instruction, text analysis, writing process, identity, technology, etc It does not differ in Korean contexts Yu (2013) conducted a literature-based study to review peer feedback studies in

a Korean EFL writing context He stated that the number of peer feedback studies has been increased especially since 2005 and it was noticeable in the growing interest in L2 writing with technology Although the focus of his analysis was on peer feedback, it is evident that the popular interest in peer feedback is the reflection of overall L2 writing

Taking the current tendency in L2 writing into account, this present study attempted to increase breadth and depth of knowledge by delving into students’ writing improvements in an extensive period of

a collaborative learning community where they implemented current writing practices The writing practice in this writing club is genre-based, as well as process-based The students of this study majored in English Education, and one of their goals was to become a teacher after successfully passing the English teacher appointment exam The test mostly required test takers to demonstrate their responses in well-structured paragraphs The students exercised the writing genre with the contents of education and education-related issues On top of that, the management of each writing task was based on the process-based writing They read an education-related article, brainstormed their thoughts about a writing topic, produced a first draft, revised feedback, and made a revised draft, although a revised draft was not compulsory at the early stage of the writing club Likewise, the students made their final writing products by completing each process-based activity Also, relating to the specifics

of the writing process, they attempted to implement different types of feedback: written feedback, spoken, online and off-line feedback Moving toward the middle stage of this writing club, the students brought the cyber space to facilitate students’ learning

Along with the currently discussed writing practices, this writing group, more importantly, was autonomous and collaborative The students who had similar goals and built rapport to make such writing club successful collaborated autonomously, even though the researcher mentored them from the middle of the writing club Despite an extensive body of studies about L2 writing, little research has been done in a context where students themselves formed their own writing

community and they controlled it by themselves Therefore, the report about the management of this student writing club and the analysis of its outcomes will shed light on L2 writing instruction and students’ learning in collaborative contexts, regardless of in classroom contexts

or in autonomous contexts Thus, this study was guided with the research questions are: 1) What are writing-related improvements or needs and other achievements that the students felt throughout the student writing club? and 2) What is evident in the students' progress reflected by timed writing tests?

II Literature Review

2.1 Collaborative learning

Collaborative learning, as Salvin (1990) points out, means that those who have different levels of learning work together for a common goal, and through collaborative process they experience successful learning In doing so, they constantly assess their learning and its process focuses on such fundamental foundations of collaboration as mutual dependance, individual responsibility, face-to-face interaction, and collaborative strategies (Johnson & Johnson, 1999) For successful collaboration, assigning roles to group members is a popular cooperative strategy, so perhaps the roles that promoted group reasoning demonstrated in Hogan’s study (1999), such as reflector, regulator, generator, questioner, explainer, and elaborator, could enhance or replace managerial and social roles typically assigned to students On the contrary, students’ rigid roles in ill-structured intellectual tasks could be counterproductive (Cohen, 1994)

There are several strategies to minimize counterproductive behaviors One strategy is that teachers minimize inequity in groups (Cohen, 1994; Hogan, 1999) Relating to that, Hogan (1999) noted that interpersonal conflicts kept the groups’ focus away from their intellectual task In his study, he stated:

The roots of the interpersonal conflicts seemed to be primarily in students’ attitudes toward others of different academic-plus-social status, with lower achieving, but more popular students verbally bullying higher achieving students (p 879)

Another strategy could be to allow students to select their own group members (Hogan, 1999) In her study about a collaborative task, severe conflicts always took place among students who had not chosen their own group members, and productive performance occurred with peers that they favored Choe & Yu’s study (2012) also maintains that rapport among group members is an important factor to promote supportive interaction for a group task In a similar vein, one sensible strategy in a forming group is to consider a strength that each group member might possess Choe & Yu (2012) investigated group peer feedback interaction in an L2 writing task The group members that they studied were characterized as their own strengths

in grammar, logic, diction, and language intuition It was observed that they best served the group task by demonstrating their own strengths.Collaborative writing could be genuine collaboration that can be imagined in the context of L2 learning Collaborative writing can be defined as the joint production of a text by two or more writers, and,

as discussed in general collaborative learning, factors, such as task type, L2 competence, and rapport that learners build, affect learning opportunities and outcomes (Kim & Lee, 2013; Storch, 2011) Relating

to the positive results of collaborative writing, Storch (2005) compared two groups of advanced ESL learners by asking one group to complete a writing task individually and the other group to do in pairs The study results indicated that the texts pairs produced were shorter, more accurate, syntactically complex, and clearer in focus In

a larger study, Wiggleworth & Storch (2009) compared two groups: 48 students who produced texts individually and 48 pairs who did in pair

It was found that, although no statistical difference was evident in fluency and complexity, accuracy of texts produced in pairs was statistically significant The researchers pinpointed that such findings were attributed to scaffolding and mutual feedback that the process of collaborative writing provided Although the number of empirical studies about collaborative writing is relatively small, its outcomes are noteworthy The studies that have proved collaborative writing is constantly positive and varying are few in number However, persuasive enough is Storch’s statement resulting from her literature study (2011):

Perhaps one of the greatest advantages of collaborative writing is that

it affords learners opportunities to pool their linguistic resources when encouraging problems Languaging about language is one of the ways to gain new knowledge about language or consolidate existing L2 knowledge This collaboration leads to the production of more accurate texts and may lead to language learning gains (p 284)

2.2 Common collaboration in L2 writing

Collaborative writing in the previous section was addressed as a type of collaborative learning since it is a not typical, but selected type in L2 writing tasks, as Storch (2011) noted that it has been

relatively rare However, peer feedback as a type of collaborative learning has been commonly implemented in the process of writing in which multiple drafts and feedback are practiced Collaboration through peer feedback also represents many varieties like peer feedback conducted online, in a spoken or written mode, in pairs, or in groups Also, even in Korean EFL contexts, the number of studies in the field has constantly expanded year after year (Yu, 2013) Along with a growing body of peer feedback studies, research findings of peer feedback collaboration demonstrated positive outcomes that can be categorized into several aspects.

To begin with, peer feedback can promote students’ learning in writing, which is the most fundamental aspect For instance, Ku & Park (2011) investigated difference between individual peer feedback and group peer feedback and found that both groups aided students in developing cognitive capability, along with affective benefits Lockhart

& Ng (1995) who analyzed the discourse of peer feedback found that analytically questioning and collaboratively meaning-searching discoursecontributed to peer writing Many other researchers (Kim, 2007; Park

& Choe, 2011; Yi, 2010) examined improvements by comparing drafts and the subsequent drafts of students In the case of Park and Choe (2011), they found that their participants focused more on local areas than global areas when they constructed feedback and peer feedback

as a complimentary means of teacher feedback contributed to their revision

Peer feedback is conducive to constructing a supportive learning community Choe & Yu (2012) studied collaborative feedback with a group of four students who had different English levels and personality features The group with close rapport provided feedback actively in language and content The students’ rapport and writing

experiences made direct influence on trust and willingness in peer feedback Suh (2005) examined college students’ perceptions about spoken and written peer feedback They pointed out that the feedback process positively and productively contributed to relation and social skills among group members In her literature, Ferris (2005) notes that peer review activities help students to create a sense of learning community Likewise, collaboration through peer feedback in L2 writing is beneficial to learners in producing the better subsequent writing, while creating supportive atmosphere.

Most critically, peer feedback activities help student writers to become competent independent writers The ultimate goal of L2 student writers may to become independent writers who can control the writing process and grasp writing contexts, including audience, to produce a satisfying piece of writing To accomplish the goal, students are expected to hone critical thinking, critiquing, and self-reflective skills, taking into account audience and the goal of a writing task Studies about L2 writing peer feedback have demonstrated that such competence can be developed through peer critiquing activities For instance, many studies (Cho 2011; Huh & Lee 2011; Joo & Kim 2010) illustrated that peer feedback activities contributed to students’ developing a critical view of writing and the learning application to the reviewers’ own writing Demonstrating practical benefits of peer response, Ferris (2005) pinpointed that, through peer response activities, “Students gain confidence, perspective, and critical thinking skills from being able to read texts by peers writing on similar tasks” (p 70) Huh & Lee (2011) found that students became aware of a sense of audience through peer critiquing

III Research Context

3.1 Participants

Twelve students who specialized in English Education at a university

in Jeonbuk Province served as participants in this study It is safe to say that all of them were highly motivated to improve their English writing since they volunteered to take a special summer writing seminar and continued to practice writing in an autonomous writing club Despite the strong motivation, the individual levels of writing competence and English proficiency varied, as shown in Table 1.Table 1 Students’ profile about English and English writing

1 The individual English writing level was holistically evaluated based on each student’s writing product in a summer writing seminar in 2011

Writing

OPIc(IM3)

2 months

All of the participants had taken English composition courses for at least one year Four students considered their English writing quite fluent in English, six students intermediate, and two students low Even the low students did not have any difficulty in constructing their argument with topics that they knew well, although they were relatively lower compared with the other students and more language-related errors and struggles in uncommon topics were also observed All of the students wanted to become English teachers at public secondary schools with their strength in writing, so their interest was not in high official English scores, but in improving their English and English writing competence

3.2 The context of the student writing club

Table 2 The student writing club in two different periods

The students in this study launched their writing club in September,

2011 to July, 2012 They continued their writing club in January and February of 2012 However, the period was not extended enough to present any particular implementations or changes Rather, the

Ÿ Mostly voluntary revision

W r i t i n g

tasks

Ÿ Argumentative

paragraphs about educational issues

Ÿ Summary, argumentative, narrative paragraphs with a variety of issues

students used the period to review the writing club and exchange ideas for the effective orchestrating of the writing club In fact, the fall of 2011 and the spring of 2012 were the periods that the researcher could compare them in relation to the writing process and the management of the writing club Table 2 illustrates how the student writing club was organized and managed in the fall of 2011 and the spring of 2012

According to Table 2, the operating process is quite similar to each other However, the details of each period tell many differences First, the researcher involved the writing process by providing occasional peer feedback, articles, and writing tasks in the spring of 2012 In such manners, the researcher supported the student writing club, while the students played dominant roles in leading the club Second, in relation to the rhetorical genre of writing, the students wrote different genre types in the fall of 2011, unlike in the spring of 2012 They wrote summary, argumentative, and narrative writing, based on the articles provided for their discussion More importantly, they set up an Internet cafe2 where they could find writing topics, and post their feedback and writing products The above changes were made after their reflection on their own writing club in January and February of 2012

3.3 Data collection and analysis

This study collected different types of data to respond to the research questions as well as to triangulate data collection The data included two surveys, three writing tests, interview data, and other

2 The Internet cafe is called “E.T.Wannabe,” indicating that the students “want to be an English teacher.

supplementary materials The supplementary data are a report of the learner’s self-evaluation on the writing club, email exchanges, periodical oral conversations, and all of the documents in the Internet site The followings are descriptions about the primary data

3.3.1 Surveys

Two surveys were conducted to investigate the changes of attitude, writing competence, peer feedback, a management of the writing club, and an overall evaluation on the writing club

The first survey was administered at the end of December, 2011 A few days before implementing the first survey, the researcher had sent it to two students to determine whether every questionnaire was clearly articulated so that the students could respond to each question without confusion Based on the two students’ comments, the researcher revised the first survey The first survey is divided into five sections: writing skills, peer feedback, writing task, mentoring3, and overall evaluation Each section consisted of several questions and some follow-up questions The second survey was administered at the end of July, 2012 Although most of the questions were the same as the ones in the first survey, a couple of questions were deleted in accordance to the changes of the writing club For instance, the students created an Internet cafe to facilitate the management of their writing club and the researcher’s supportive participation The researcher, as a mentor, encouraged the participants to practice their writing by designing writing tasks4 and occasionally providing feedback Therefore, the researcher included questions to investigate

3 The participants helped freshmen to improve their writing by providing feedback during the first period of the writing club

4 After the first stage of the writing club, they felt difficulty in devising writing questions so the researcher constructed and posted them on the Internet cafe.

the learners’ opinions about the Internet cafe and the researcher’s participation

The researcher coded the survey results according to the thematic sections: writing skills, peer feedback, management, teacher participation, and overall evaluation The four main sections are also divided into several sub-sections For example, the section of writing skills involves initial expectations, improvements, expectations in process, improvements, and on-going expectations according to the timely process of the writing club The study did not entail all of the details about the thematic sections, but included most of the ‘writing skills’ section and the ‘overall evaluation’ section The section of peer feedback was examined to better understand the students’ advancement in their writing competence The other sections were included and still important in order to grasp what and how the student writing club was going and to contextualize the major research findings

3.3.2 Interviews

The researcher interviewed five participants, and the interviews were conducted organically with the survey questions Before interviewing the participants, the researcher examined the participants’ responses to the surveys, and then developed guided questions for the interview However, the interview was semi-structured, which means some questions were developed flexibly during the interview Interview reponses were used to enhance and clarify the survey responses

3.3.3 Writing tests

Three writing tests were administered to determine whether the students presented their consistent improvement during the entire

period of the writing club The writing tests were given before5, in the middle of, and at the end of the entire writing club After reading

an article6 related to education, the students were asked to complete one summary paragraph and one argumentative paragraph The length

of each article was about 500 hundred words long The students were allowed to spend 2 hours and 10 minutes by using a computer The first two tests occurred at a computer lab and the third one was taken in a traditional class with the students’ own laptops The three writing tests were identical in their structure, though content to write about was not the same The directions of one test were as follows:

A Writing Test

A Read the article, “There Are No Stupid Questions, But ” Then complete two paragraphs: One for summary and the other for opinion You can use a dictionary while reading

B There is no specific guide for summary and opinion; however,

a both of them should be well-organized and have good flow with good vocabulary and language use;

b also, your opinion-based paragraph should be based on the author’s main point you will find in the article;

c each paragraph should be between 190 words and 210 words

A Complete this writing task within 2 hours and 10 minutes, but no longer than the given time After completing your writing, send your file

to hjyu2007@gmail.com.

5 The researcher determined to delve into the student writing club three month after it actually began However, around four months before it began, the researcher tested the same students to see their writing improvement after my writing class The researcher used it for the pre-test for this particular study, and the following tests had the same format.

6 The articles for writing tests were retrieved from Education Week (http://www edweek.org/ew/section/free-content/index.html) This Web site provides freely accessible articles about current educational issues, which pre-service teachers are worth to be aware of

To evaluate the students’ performance, the researcher asked one native speaker of English who held a master’s in Applied Linguistics and had been teaching English to Korean university students more than 10 years The researcher asked him to use Jacobs et al.’s scoring profile (1981) that represents the varied domains of content, organization, vocabulary, language, and mechanics to evaluate the students’ writing, as he slightly adapted it to assess their paragraph writing Summary writing tasks were excluded for this analysis since the evaluating process could become complicated This was because the evaluator should comprehend the original articles first and assess how well each student demonstrated his or her understanding the author’s argument However, the researcher described the main points

of each article by reading through some of the students’ summaries, and also told him to evaluate each student’s point according to his or her topic sentence During the evaluation process, he called the researcher and met with each other to clarify his assessing approach Then he gained confidence his valid evaluation which the researcher could confirm by interviewing him stating, “I made sure of my legitimate evaluation by referring to the description of the rubric, others’ writing, and each one’s gradual improvement.” Likewise, the interview with him after the completion of his grading assured his valid assessment on the students’ writing

In addition to the above primary data set, the other supplementary data, such as the students’ own reflective survey about the writing club, email exchanges, periodical face-to-face conversations, talks on the phone and all of the documents on the Internet site, illustrated what occurred in the student writing club and therefore helped me to better picture it and the effectiveness of its operation

IV Findings and Discussions

4.1 Changes of students’ expectations and improvements about writing

This section is based on the questions about “Writing skills,” which asked the students about perceived expectations and improvements before and after the student writing club The questions about writing skills included in the first survey are: 1 What did you expect to achieve for your writing skills by attending the student writing club?;

2 Describe your overall improvement in your writing skills after one-semester student writing club?; 3 What do you want to improve more in order to become more confident in your English writing? The first survey was conducted after the fall of 2011; therefore, the first question of the first survey about the expectations before the student writing club is retrospective

The same questions about writing skills included in the second survey are: 1 Describe your overall improvement in your writing skills over the period of the student writing club; 2 What do you want to still improve more for your English writing? The second question involves the students’ writing expectations even after this writing club This section presents what the students expect to improve and what they developed in terms of writing competence through the year-long student-centered writing club

Table 3 indicates the students’ response to the question: What did you expect to achieve for your writing skills by attending the student writing club?

Table 3 Students’ expectations before the writing club

Participants’ comments

Ÿ to write fluently (5)

Ÿ to maintain writing ability (3)

Ÿ to write cohesively and coherently (3)

Ÿ to enjoy writing tasks (2)

Ÿ to write with proper words (2)

Ÿ to make English writing natural to me (to have confidence) (2)

Ÿ to write about various topics

Ÿ to improve writing speed

Ÿ to construct compelling writing content

Ÿ to provide productive feedback

Ÿ to remove recurring errors

Ÿ to pick up reading speed

Ÿ to extend background knowledge

Ÿ to read articles about education issues

Ÿ to use useful expressions automatically

Ÿ to make readers understood

Ÿ to receive a good grade in writing assignments

Table 3 indicates that the participants addressed their writing expectations in various aspects of writing, but the aspects of their goals by being part of the student writing club can be divided into three It is evident that they addressed the importance of writing itself When addressing it, they pointed out all of the evaluation criteria of writing, which are content, organization, vocabulary, grammar, and also voice They stated that they want to make readers understood, write cohesively and coherently, write with proper vocabulary, and remove recurring errors

They also set their goal to make their writing more natural Many of them were good at the language of English and highly motivated in working with their peers by sparing extra time for the student writing