The Effect of Collaborative Writing Technique on Paragraph Organization and Coherence in Female High School EFL Learners

This study investigates the effect of the Collaborative Writing Technique on the development of paragraph organization and coherence among female high school EFL learners. A total of ۴۴ students, enrolled in two intact classes, participated in an eight week intervention program integrated into their regular English curriculum, with eight hours of instruction per week. The research adopted a quasi experimental pretest–posttest design to examine improvement in writing performance. Before the treatment, both groups were administered a standardized paragraph writing test adapted from the Cambridge Writing Assessment Framework, serving as the pretest. Subsequently, one class received instruction through collaborative writing activities—pair and group composition, joint revision, and peer feedback—while the other followed a conventional individual writing approach. After eight weeks, a posttest of comparable difficulty measured changes in paragraph quality, focusing on textual organization and coherence.Data were analyzed using paired and independent samples t tests to determine the statistical significance of differences between pre and post instruction scores. The findings revealed that students who engaged in collaborative writing demonstrated substantial improvement in paragraph organization, logical flow, and coherence compared to those taught individually. These results suggest that structured collaboration enhances learners’ awareness of textual unity and cohesion, providing a supportive environment for idea generation and linguistic accuracy. The study concludes that integrating collaborative writing into EFL writing instruction can lead to measurable gains in paragraph quality, recommending its systematic use in secondary EFL classrooms.

کلیدواژه ها:

Collaborative Writing ، Paragraph Coherence ، EFL Writing Instruction ، Writing Organization ، Socio Cognitive Theory (or Cooperative Learning)