CHAPTER III FINDINGS FINDINGS
3.1 TEACHERS’ EXPERIENCES
3.1.1 Theme 1: Adding A Different Taste: Solidarity in Writing
Bringing collaborative writing as supplementary activity in the teaching of writing was considered as weird and risky decision. It should be carefully
synergized with the mainstream pedagogy of teaching writing. By nature, writing has been seen as individual or solitary activity which relies much of individual student’s perfomance in expressing ideas and discovering meaning. Each student is the most responsible person for outlining, drafting, editing revising, and finalising the draft. However, in some writing classes, involving two or more students to work together while in the process of writing has been commonly done as supplementary activity. Peer-editing has been popular part of writing process in which students work together to check one another piece of writing. Then, the rest of writing process will come back to individual responsibility.
Starting to apply collaborative writing were from many reasons which came from teachers’ deep look on their class situation. Students were the first priority to be the cause to apply collaborative writing. It was found from the narrative that T1 identified that students had linguistic problems to be solved not only with teacher. The teacher-student session did not work well as it was hard for T1 to spend too much time correcting grammatical mistakes.
‘Many of the students had big problems with English grammar, appropriate tense, amd well-ordered sentence’ 2.1-2.3 (T1Re.1) ‘There was somekind of a gap between us. Some of them even felt inferior when I told them their mistakes’ 3.1 (T1Re.2). ‘The feeling was different from when they were discussing their problems with their friends. There were fewer gaps when they were talking to a friend’ 3.2 (T1Re.2)
T2 recognized that at the initial stage of writing class, individual writing cannot facilitate students to learn others. In the process of discovering the meaning of the text, students needed others to discuss.
‘Individual writing seemed to be ineffective because it does not give any chance for the students to learn from their friends’ 2.1 (T2Re.1). ‘When they write individually, for brave students, they never hesitate to come and see for consultation, but for shy students, they felt doubt to see me having face-to-face interaction’ 2.2 (T2Re.2)
T3 used collaborative writing as the weapon to solve studens’ sleepy period for having mid-day class session. This was more practical consideration because talking with friends activate them to contribute ideas and give comments to other ideas.
‘I felt that it was sleepy period... I needed something new which was not done individually’ 4.1 (T3Re.1). ‘From free writing, they have various competence, writing skill or proficiency, so very hard to develop their skill individually’ 4.2 (T3Re.2).
The narratives tell that the teachers concern much on students’ need to learn and interact with friends during the writing process. All teachers believed that
having talk with others can make them relieve and gain more comfort zone to write. Meanwhile, instead of those aforementioned reasons, T2 used her personal learning experience as imporant reason to apply collaborative writing. As a leaner, T2 experienced 6 months academic training program where the learning process was mostly done in group. It was fruitful experience for T2, therefore, working in group became T2’s major activity in her writing class.
‘I remembered, during nine months, I did my pre-departure training, I rarely did individual assignments. Most of the tasks were done collaboratively in ‘roundtable’ that gave me chance to share and discuss ideas... . By doing collaborative works, I could learn something from my friends either new things or the missing lesson which had been taught by the instructor in the class. From this experience, I thought that ‘Oh, I should do like this’ 4.5-8 (T2Re.4)
At the beginning of their collaborative writing class, the three teachers told some stories indicating their ups moments. It was the moment when teachers gained lots of joy in applying collaborative writing. T1 reflected that her teaching responsbility became easier. It was in line with T2 who felt that her teaching writing was more efficient. In term of time to spend with one-by-one students, T1 and T2 shared similar stories. It was found that T1 did not spend too much time to help low students. Story from T2 revealed that no need to meet with every
student. Moreover, at this point, T1 also felt that she was more succeesful teacher.
‘To me, my responsibility was easier especially for correcting the papers as there would be fewer papers to correct’ 4.1 (T1Op.1). ‘I don’t have to spend too much time to help low students as I assigned some students to assisst me to solve their friends’ problem’ 7.2 (T1Op.2). ‘I feel like I am a more successfull teacher when I am able to teach more students to write well organized essay in English 6.1. Moreover, making changes in CW class taught me more of how to apply this strategy’ (T1Op.3)
‘...it makes my writing teaching efficient. I don’t need to explain the materials one by one to students...students can check their understanding to their peer before finally confirm it (in group) again to me as a lecturer’ 6.3 (T2Op.1). ‘I didn’t need to meet them one by one to have consultation but as a group and they completed each other’ 6.4 (T2Op.2)
‘Various topics from them were my effective way to group them based on their interest, then, asked them to read and write. It begins from their interest, to write something
unique not because everyone talks about it but because everyone like it. Collaborative writing really works well’ 4.1-3 (T3Op).
Applying different strategy like collaborative writing, for sure, raised difficult and problematic situation for teachers. Some challenges were recollected and analyzed from three teachers’ stories. T1 told that there was a big gap between the essay written by high and low achievers as stated that. The situation was caused by difficulty to manage the collaboration. T2’s story also confirmed about the down side of the journey. The difficulty in knowing who works more or less, then, challenged teachers’ sensitivity to see it closely. Based on the narratives, it was hard for T1 and T3 to monitor students’ involvement. While T3 also shared similar sad experience. They told:
‘The result of the essay was not as good as I expected. The part of the essay written by high achiever was well organized, while the rest of it was not’ 4.4-5 (T1Cha.1). ‘I didn’t have any special rubric to assess students’ collaborative work’ 7.12 (T1Cha.3) ‘It didn’t run very successfully because most students had difficulties to manage teamwork especially in sharing responsibilities’ 4.6 (T1Cha.2)
‘Sometimes, it is difficult to me to know who works more or less and who really understands the material or not’ 6.11 (T2Cha)
‘Unfortunetly, I haven’t got the model for that, I think it was one of the weaknesses of pairwork. I cannot monitor whether the cooperation still work, or dominate others’ 4.28 (T3Cha).
Under this theme, teachers’ experiences represented the situation that when the first time the teachers employed collaborative writing was inseperable from any ups and downs side. Their experiences came from many different angels including from they themselves, their students and classroom situation. It was clearly seen that teaching using collaborative writing activity provided both opportunities and treads. Teachers’ reason to use collaborative writing can be categorized into pedagogical and practical rationale. From the narratives,
collaborative writing was seen by teachers as alternative activity to reduce
teachers’ burden which later it was considered as potential and promising activity to improve students’ writing skill.