the effect of collaborative writing on iranian pre-intermediate efl learners’ writing ability

Writing is an important and essential skills, beside reading, listening, and speaking, in learning of second language. it is a process in which a writer chooses the words to create a sentence that must be meaningful and understandable for readers. writers can show their semantic knowledge, lexical knowledge, proficiency in use of syntax, and grammatical points. therefore, this skill is important as like as other skills. one technique which has been used to improve writing is “collaborative writing”. collaboration is a purposeful relationship among all members in a group to produce a joint production. in this process teamwork plays an important role for individuals to do their tasks better than when they are alone. the study aimed to reveal the effect of collaborative writing on iranian pre-intermediate english foreign language (efl) learners’ writing ability. in order to achieve the purpose of the study, 30 efl learners were selected who were studying english in pooyesh and faraz language institutes, aliabad katoul, iran. the participants were divided into two groups; one as experimental and the other one as control group which included 20 participants. while in the former group, the learners received collaborative writing as treatment during the course, that is, they were asked to write in groups. in the second one, the participants did not receive any special treatment, i.e. they were asked to work alone as solo work. after the treatment period which included 16 sessions, the students were administered a posttest to see if the treatment was successful. the results of independent samples t-test indicated that the learners in experimental group performed better than the control group in terms of writing ability. the results of current study can be helpful and effective for both efl teachers and learners. based on these results, learners can improve their writing ability and teachers can have a deeper understanding from learners’ writing and apply collaborative writing in the real classrooms.