Cooperative writing response groups: revising global aspects of L2 writing in a constrained educational environment

MELINA PORTO

Journal of Further and Higher Education.

Taylor & Francis Group

Año: 2014

0309-877X

Revista indexada en (http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjfh20#.VoFynLZ97IU):AVETRA ranking of VET and adult education journalsAustralian Education Index (AEI)Australian Research Council (ARC) Ranked Journal ListNational Database for Research into International Education (NDRI)British Education IndexEducational Research Abstracts online (ERA)Education Resources Information Center (ERIC)ERIH (European Reference Index for the Humanities, Pedagogical and Educational Research)Research into Higher Education AbstractsSCOPUS® VOCEDplusThis article describes a cooperative writing response initiative designed to develop writing skills in foreign/second-language contexts (hereafter L2). The strategy originated from my desire to cater for my learners´ need to become better writers in English within a constrained educational environment in Argentina. In this article I describe this strategy and show how it has worked in my setting. First, I offer the rationale on which it rests, based on a sociocultural conception of reading and writing. This involves brief considerations about the notions of collaborative writing groups, social responses to texts and coherence in L2 writing. Second, I describe and explain the strategy in detail, and include one handout with specific written instructions (as my learners received them) for the cooperative writing response groups with a focus on coherence, i.e. global aspects of the composing process. Finally, I exemplify the strategy using one learner´s written text as a foundation (disclosed by permission).