Housekeeping
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Gaslight: Rethinking the Traditional Writing Assignment
The typical solo writing assignment has key limitations.
- Isolated Process: Students lack immediate peer feedback when writing alone.
- Delayed Feedback: The traditional "red pen" is often demotivating and inefficient.
- Missed Learning: Students can't pool linguistic knowledge or learn from each other's strengths.
Gatekeep: The Research on Collaborative Writing
Students writing together is a core learning activity, not just group work.
- The Article: Davison, I., Vega, J. L. M., Chew, S. Y., & Gallagher, M. (2025). Assessing the Learning Potential of Second Language Student Interaction in Collaborative Writing. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 15(5), 1410–1419. https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1505.05
- Collaborative Writing: Two or more students work together to produce a single text.
- Language-Related Episodes (LREs): The crucial conversations where students negotiate language use (word choice, grammar, organization).
- Key Finding: The study found that peer feedback during collaborative writing was overwhelmingly correct (only 7 of 470 instances were incorrect), making it a reliable and powerful source of learning.
Girlboss: Making Collaborative Writing Work in Your Classroom
Adapt the strategy for any level with practical, low-prep activities.
- Write and Discuss: Model collaboration by co-creating a text with the whole class after a shared experience. Use pop-up grammar to model LREs.
- Dictogloss: Have students work in groups to reconstruct a short text they heard. This focuses collaboration on language rather than content creation.
- Formative Practice: Use collaborative writing as a low-stakes practice run before a similar individual assessment to build skills and confidence.
- Information Sandwich: Students with different texts pair up to synthesize their unique information into a single, co-written piece.
Resources Mentioned
- Honing Our Craft (Henshaw & Potowski)
- Anne-Marie Chase on AP Spanish
- languageley.com (Pets unit)
- The World Language Classroom Podcast
- Somewhere to Share (Carrie Toth)
