Collaborative Wiki Writing Gives Language Learners Opportunities for Personalised Participatory Peer-Feedback

Abstract

Collaborative writing using a wiki (an online platform) is useful for learning to write in another language because it enables a group of learners to write together, discuss their writing process and product and exchange personalised participatory peer-feedback. In other words, collaborative writers can individually generate and consume feedback on language, content, contribution and participation, mediated through the group’s collaborative products, namely, their written text and their written, spoken or signed discussions about the text. Collaborative wiki writing is also useful because it can develop learners’ skills in (1) idea creation, (2) writing in the target language, and (3) information literacy, as well as (4) social and interpersonal skills, (5) personal skills, (6) cognitive or academic skills and (7) metacognitive skills. Depending on the writing activity/task design and how learners tackle it, the process of collaborative writing in the target language may integrate the use of these different skills and bring collaborative writers a sense of achievement, positive attitudes, and confidence in writing. Collaborative wiki writing has advantages for both learners and teachers. The process meets language learners’ needs for an audience, sharing ideas, language input, language output, experience in solving language problems, taking on different social roles, giving feedback (with the possibility of the protege effect) and observing language feedback and negotiation in other group members. The process meets language teachers’ needs for developing their learners’ communication skills and, using Kumaravadivelu’s terms (Beyond methods: macrostrategies for language teaching. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2003), particularity (teaching responsively to their own learners in context), practicality (reflexivity in turning practice to theory and theory to practice), and possibility (potential for developing social identity and for transforming social inequalities). Collaborative wiki writing in a target language, such as English, is useful for developing language proficiency through interaction at the same time as a range of cognitive, affective and social skills.