The Impact of Mediational Artifact Types on EFL Learners’ Writing Complexity: Collaboration vs. Asynchronous Artifacts

The present study was an attempt to investigate the significance of environmental changes on the development of writing in english as a foreign language (efl) context with respect to the individual. this study also compared the impacts of collaboration and asynchronous computer mediation (acm) on the writing complexity of efl learners. to this end, three intact writing classes were designated as collaborative faceto- face group (n = 21), asynchronous computer mediation group (n = 20) and control group (n =16). the two experimental groups received scaffolding instructions on narrative essays. the collaborative faceto- face group (cffg) went through the working in pairs, and working asynchronously through a researcherdesigned website (acmg). the data were analyzed employing anova. the results showed that the cffg group improved in terms of their writing complexity and the former outperformed the acmg group. the findings brought to light the benefits of pair work and showed that learners working in pairs used structures that were more complex in their writing than the acmg group.