Journal of Emerging Trends in Educational Research and Policy Studies: Home

Abstract:
This paper reports a research carried out in two classrooms to investigate a) effect of collaborative writing and peer-editing on students' writings and b) changes to teacher's role in the classroom when peer-editing is involved, and c) students' opinions of this process. This research is an extension of Mangelsdor's study where no collaborative writing was involved. It was carried out with Second-year English department students at the Teachers College, King Saud University in Saudi Arabia. Either after the treatment, they were asked to write either collaboratively or individually a well-organized paragraph on a given topic. Peer-editing was applied to students' writings, which was repeated several times. Questionnaires, samples of students' edited drafts and teachers' observations were used to collect data. The study found these techniques enhanced in-class interaction and improved students' writings by raising their awareness on a text writer's choices. On the part of the teachers, however, their role was only to give instructions and observe students, along with some other relevant steps. It spurs students to be cooperative rather than competitive, a way deemed instrumental to the success of peer- editing.

Keywords: collaborative writing, peer-editing, writing skill, EFL Learners, EFL Saudi university students.

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