Collaboration in the Writing Classroom: a Study of Thai University Students

This experimental study was designed to investigate Thai students at Silpakorn University, Bangkok, Thailand on their attitudes and preferences toward peer collaboration in an English writing class. The study took three consecutive weeks to be done. There were 32 participants in this study: 12 in the control group and 20 in the experimental group. All participants were asked to write a 2-3 page essay describing a place that held some importance to them in two drafts. Every participant had a week to work on each draft. The control group participants reviwed their drafts themselves. The experimental group participants, however, were engaged with peer feedback and peer conferencing. Each draft was collected and graded individually by two raters based on "The Essay Rating Scale: FL Composition Profile" adapted by Hedgcock and Lefkowitz from Composicion, Proceso y Sintesis by Valdes and Dvorak. A survey exploring students' attitudes towards peer response was distributed to the participants in the experimental group at the end of the study. The results of the essay analysis revealed that, although the findings were not statistically significant, the participants in the experimental group did perform slightly better than the control group in the total and in most of the subcomponent scores, especially in the higher order concerns (content and organization), the important areas in teaching writing as a process. The survey revealed that the majority of the experimental group participants had positive to neutral attitudes towards peer conferencing and its whole process although they did not incorporate peer comments into their revision as much as they had thought they would.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts in English

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Year

2003

Author dc:creator

• Piyarutchanunt, Piyawadee

Contributors dc:contributor

• Christine Biava

• English Language and Literature

Statement dc:rights

• © Piyawadee Piyarutchanunt

Repository record dc:identifier

https://bearworks.missouristate.edu/theses/722

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:bearworks.missouristate.edu:theses-1723