Child learners’ reflections about EFL grammar in a collaborative writing task: when form is not at odds with communication

Abstract

Collaborative writing tasks have been claimed to offer language learning opportunities because they implicitly draw learners’ attention to form. Nevertheless, their efficacy has been claimed to be moderated by proficiency, as low proficiency learners tend to override form over meaning. These claims, however, are mostly based on adult learners and little work has been carried out with child low proficiency learners. The present study analyzes the oral production of 31 dyads of L1 Spanish young EFL learners (aged 11–12) while completing a collaborative dictogloss task in which the embedded target form was the 3rd person singular morpheme -s. The instances in which they deliberated about language were operationalized as Language Related Episodes according to their focus and resolution. Resolved deliberations incorporated into the collaborative written output were also quantified. The findings show that these children focused significantly more on form than on meaning, yet, they significantly focused more on other grammatical forms than on the target -s. Regarding resolution, there were significantly more correctly resolved LREs than incorrectly resolved or unresolved ones. Finally, resolved LREs were mostly incorporated in the writing, regardless of their focus. A number of implications drawn from these results are discussed for research and pedagogy.