Impact of Collaborative and Reflective Writing Activities on Students’ Autonomy in Writing: An Action Research on Freshmen Law Students

The primary aim of this study is to investigate the impact of collaboration and reflection dimensions of the ‘Collaborative and Reflective Writing Program’ (CRWP) on the development of students’ autonomy in writing. In order to explore the issue, the following research questions were addressed: 1. What is the impact of ‘Collaborative and Reflective Writing Program’ on students’ autonomy in writing? 2. How does the collaboration dimension of the ‘Collaborative and Reflective Writing Program’ help students develop autonomy in writing? 3. How does the reflection dimension of the ‘Collaborative and Reflective Writing Program’ help students develop autonomy in writing? The present action research was carried out with twenty two freshman Law students at Modern Languages Division at Eastern Mediterranean University in the spring semester of the academic year 2013-2014. In this study, a mixed research design, adopting both quantitative and qualitative research procedures was employed. The overall study was constructed on the basis of Creswell’s (Cresswell, 2011) embedded design since qualitative data were embedded within a quantitative design. The quantitative data were collected through Learner Autonomy Questionnaire, administered at the beginning and at the end of the writing program. The qualitative data, on the other hand, were gathered through classroom observations, reflective journals, focus group interviews and student essays. The data collected were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. In analyzing quantitative data, Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test was employed. The qualitative data were analyzed inductively using thematic approach. In relation to the research questions, the qualitative and quantitative data triangulated from multiple sources revealed that students’ autonomy in writing was promoted as a result of the collaborative and reflective activities of the writing program. The qualıtatıve and quantıtatıve findings also exhibited that the collaborative and reflective dimensions of the writing program promoted students’ autonomy, by developing their emotional, cognitive and metacognitive skills during pre-, while- and post-writing stages throughout the modules. In the light of the findings of the study, in order to develop students’ autonomy in writing skill, certain suggestions related to the reconstruction of the course syllabi in English Language Teaching and professional development of the teachers at the institution were put forward. Keywords: Autonomy in Writing, Action Research, Reflection, Collaboration, Process Writing