Engagement in collaborative writing: Exploring learners’ control of task content and text quality

Abstract

AbstractTo extend L2 collaborative writing (CW) research that has largely focused on learners’ interactional behaviours and written performance, the current study adopted learner engagement as a theoretical lens to investigate whether different aspects of learner engagement in CW (i.e., cognitive, emotional and social) are affected by learners’ control of task content and whether they predict text quality. Thirty ESL learners performed two CW tasks, with the first task giving learners all pictures to co‐construct a story in writing whereas in the second task they were given half of the picture set and thus had to self‐produce the content for the rest of the story. Learner engagement during CW was gauged by multiple measures (e.g., LREs, idea units, instances of responsiveness, and self‐rated emotions). Post‐task interviews were conducted to supplement the quantitative results about the impact of the control of task content on learner engagement. Discourse analysis was applied to examine the linguistic aspects of the joint‐written text. Learner engagement scores were compared across two task conditions and entered into regression models to examine their association with the text quality. Results revealed that learners showed and reported higher cognitive, social, and emotional engagement in CW when they had greater control over the task content than when provided with all content. LREs, an indicator of cognitive engagement, were found to predict the texts’ accuracy. Results are discussed in terms of the design of CW tasks and the role of learner engagement in text quality.