The Impact of Different Kinds of Collaborative Prewriting on EFL Learners’ Degree of Engagement in Writing and Writing Self-Efficacy

Abstract

Despite claims concerning the positive impact of prewriting planning, particularly of a collaborative type, research has not produced consistent results. The present study was conducted to investigate the effect of different types of prewriting planning on students’ writing self-efficacy and their cognitive, behavioral, and emotional engagement. The participants were three groups of advanced Iranian EFL students at the Iran Language Institute exposed to one of the following conditions: peer-led collaborative prewriting (PLCP), teacher-led collaborative prewriting (TLCP), and individual prewriting (IP) groups. A number of one-way ANOVAs conducted on the data drawn from the learners’ written performance and questionnaires revealed that the PLCP group outperformed the other two groups on behavioral engagement and the fluency measures of cognitive engagement. However, the TLCP group had a better performance in terms of emotional engagement. As for accuracy and complexity, the other two aspects of cognitive engagement, the three groups showed no significant difference. In addition, PLCP and TLCP groups were similar concerning their self-efficacy and outperformed the IP group in this regard. On the whole, the results showed that each of the prewriting activities employed in this study could have its own distinct role in learners’ cognitive, emotional, and behavioral engagement as well as their self-efficacy.