Liselerin yabancı dil sınıflarında işbirlikçi yazma

Even though the curriculum of the Ministry of National Education includes learning outcomes related to basic language skills, these are often overlooked, especially writing skills are ignored. Students have difficulty in writing activities, which are the requirements of English classes, and teachers are reluctant to teach this skill. In collaborative studies, students may carry onward their linguistic and cognitive levels further than the existing level. In this study, based on Vygotsky's socio-cultural constructivist theory, it is aimed to develop students' writing skills by providing learning support to each other. This study primarily takes aim at developinging L2 writing skill of the students studying at foreign language department of a state high school in Hatay, Turkey through collaborative writing. It also targets to find out whether there is quality and quantity difference between the individual writings and collaborative writings of the students in their essays. Within this context, the study was carried out with 12th grade Foreign Language Department students in Anatolian High School in Hatay. During the study process, writing training was given first and then writing activity applications were performed. Since only two schools in the district have a Foreign Language Department, Purposive Sampling Method was used in student selection. The participants were divided into two main groups, the control group and the experimental group. Both groups worked on the same tasks during the study. Writing skills were covered in the first semester courses and practice was done in the second semester. Each period took 8 weeks with 2 lesson hours in each week. The control group performed these practices individually, while the experimental group performed in accordance with the collaborative method, in 4 groups of 3 students. The analyses of writings were carried out in line with an evaluation rubric that is a four-point scale and borrowed from ESL Composition Profile (Jacobs, et al., 1981). The results of analysis showed that students who wrote collaboratively scored higher marks in terms of content, organization, vocabulary/languge use, and grammar usage than the control group did. Keywords: collaborative writing, individual writing, colloboration, writing in EFL, essay/paragraph writing