CHAPTER IV DISCUSSION
5.1 Conclusion
CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
This chapter indicates the last part of the dissertation which covers some points on restatement of the findings, limitation of the study, theoretical and pedagogical implications, and recommendation for further research and ELT practitioners.
collaborative writing gave them opportunity to make their teaching more effective and efficient. However, they still did not have sufficient support for a rubric to assess collaborative work, a model of collaborative writing, and a monitoring system.
The second finding informs teachers’ experiences in managing collaborative writing. It is found the teachers grouped the students by using both teacher-
assigned and student-selected group. In the teacher-assigned group, teachers decided based on students’ pre-writing result which is also known as proficiency pairing. Meanwhile, the student-selected group was done based on close
relationship among students. Furthermore, checking the students’ involvement during the collaboration became the teachers’ main concern which was achieved by asking one student and having one on one session. In designing collaborative writing, all teachers used total collaboration, but, the students often divide the part for each member. In term of assessing the collaborative work, it was found that T2 and T3 involved collaborative work as one of criteria.
The third finding reveals that collaborative writing gave instructional and nurturing benefits. Collaborative writing provides great opportunities for students to have grammatical and lexical accuracy, organization and coherence, content, and idea generation. In terms of nurturing benefits, teachers shared that
collaborative writing was ‘non-threatening approach’ that creates stimulating classroom atmosphere for students. The existence of equality and mutuality that emerged during collaboration created fun atmosphere in the classroom, hence, made low-proficiency students more confident to share and write. Furthermore, high students became more open and sensitive to assisting their friends.
Based on the teachers’ reflection, it was found the best practices from them.
The best practices, then, directed them to keep applying collaborative writing. It was found that T1 will continue with collaborative drafting and editing. T2 will intensively use Google.doc to enter online collaboration. While T3 will still continue with total collaboration, but, it will be done in pairs. All teachers’ future directions implies that there is no magic formula to apply collaborative writing.
Meanwhile, students also shared important experiences about collaborative writing. They felt confused at the first time assigned to write together. They shared that they were like in a competition to win whose idea was the best to choose. They also faced the issue of paratism which made the collaboration did not work well. There was shifting feeling after they followed collaborative writing class. Collaborative writing served them chance to have comfortable atmosphere for discussing ideas.
The findings confirm that students gained instructional and nurturing benefits from collaborative writing. The instructional benefits could be seen from the improvement on content, grammar and language style. For both students, collaborative writing also boosted the quality of their writing resulted from the interaction where they found a place to get better writing and meaningful feedback. In terms of nurturing benefits, the findings of the study reveal that students sharpened the negotiation skill, mutual and equal relationship, and time management skill, particularly.
The last findings on students’ experiences were about their evaluation and hopes. They evaluated that the issue of paratism was crucial to solve in order to
have complementary collaboration. They reflected to their own roles during the collaboration which made them realized the importance of giving contribution in the group. They had aspiration that teachers must have clear guidelines for collaborative writing. They wanted every single step must be clear for them, hence, students’ motive to reach high equality and mutuality in writing the task will be high. Realizing the power of collaborative writing, students viewed that collaborative writing should be built based on complementary situation and interdependent relationship in finishing the writing task. It offers great opportunities to have ‘shared expertise’ and to appreciate strengths and weaknesses.
5.2 Limitation of the Study
This narrative study is not free from limitations. First, relocating teachers’
reflection on and students’ experiences in collaborative writing challenged the researcher capacity to take a balanced position in representing them. It may get easily trapped to place them as superheros who can solve the problems in
collaborative writing. Second, teachers and students might give more detailed and potentially interesting narratives and expressions if they had written and spoken in their first language, Indonesian. This narrative study is still far from perfection as it cannot capture all important experiences that reflected day-to-day experiences of teachers and students.
5.3 Implication of the Study
Conducting a narrative study results in two contributions. A number of theoretical and pedagogical implications are derived from the findings of the study. The main theoretical implication is to incorporate previous efforts to
confirm the sociocultural theory and communicative language teaching as strong support for applying collaborative writing. It also strengthens how process approach pedagogy closely relates to collaborative writing. Another theoretical implication of the study is the findings that collaborative writing goes beyond microskills of writing. The findings shows that collaborative writing opens up students’ social skills such as being open to other types of students and having good skill to negotiate and discuss.
From a pedagogical point of view, the findings of the study provide supplementary empirical evidence of the advantages of collaborative writing in EFL writing classroom. The social context in collaborative writing facilitated the students to learn from others. The interaction during collaboration provided rich Language-Related Episodes for better grammatical and lexical accuracy.
Moreover, equal and mutual relationships gave the students stimulating space to sharpen their other writing skills such as better content and organization. It has been widely revealed that students’ hard skill in terms of writing performance gains much improvement bacause of collaborative writing. The findings of the present research fill the gap on how collaborative writing improves students’ soft skills.
Teachers’ intensive exposure for doing collaborative writing gives students a meaningful space to build their soft skills. Collaborative writing builds students’
character as a social being. The interaction and negotiation during the collaboration trains them to be more open and respectful to any differences.
Students have great opportunity to create network, have cultural interaction, and have sense of friendship. Collaborative writing also becomes a potential strategy
for reflecting ‘gotong royong’ which culturally has become one of the principles of Indonesian way of life. Collaborative writing provides formal harmony in learning which leads to positive association with collectiveness in society.
Collaborative writing represents one of pillars of education that is learning to live together. Çekiç (2010: 9) elaborates into the ability to collaborate with others, respect and appreciate the diversity, share knowledge, and negotiate ideas. It has been clear collaborative writing escalates the essence of character education for students.