چکیده:
With the dissemination of a process-oriented approach to teaching writing,
collaborative learning, which enjoys a constructivist theoretical foundation,
has found its place in most writing classes and has shed light on interesting
issues. This piece of research seeks to examine the impact of incorporating
collaboration into Iranian BFL writing classes. The participants were 120
Persian-speaking English major students taking their writing courses, and 26
writing teachers, with minimum three yeats of experience teaching writing at
university level. Data were gained from two pre- and post-course student and
a teacher questionnaire surveys in order to evaluate the usefulness of different
tasks and teachers’ perception of student preference, respectively. The
findings indicated that the participants welcomed collaboration. There was
not a high degree of correspondence between teachers’ perception of
students’ preferences and their actual preferences, If carefully planned,
implementation of collaboration, a concerted endeavor made jointly by the
students, would allow for an interaction that is meaningful, authentic and
supportive.
خلاصه ماشینی:
It is the main concern of the present study, therefore, to investigate learners' attitudes toward collaborative tasks prior to its implementation in class and after that, Moreover, attempt is made to delve into the degree of match that exists between student and teacher view on such tasks.
Describing the importance of students' prior knowledge, Barrel states, "giving learners the opportunity and responsibility of contributing to the class proves to be a major factor in generating high levels of motivation, participation and communication in the language classroom.
45 Let's Care about Our Students Collaborative teachers differ in that they invite students to set specific goals, to provide options for activities and assignments that capture different student interests and goals, and to encourage students to assess what they learn (Barrel, 1996; Skehan, 1998; Spanos et al, 2001; Underhill, 1999).
Facilitating involves creating rich environments and activities for linking new information to prior knowledge, providing opportunities for collaborative work and problem solving and offering students a multiplicity of authentic tasks (Oxford, 1997; Kohonen, 1992).
Also, 26 teachers whose age ranged between 35- 56, with minimum three years' experience of teaching writing courses at university, were invited to take part in the teacher survey, Materials CELT Test: A proficiency test was used to classify students into different groups because one of the aims of the study was to find out whether language proficiency affected student preference for taking part in collaborative tasks.