Cooperative Writing through Dictogloss: An Investigation Regarding Accuracy and Complexity

Abstract

Despite rich potentials for research, theorizing and practice, cooperative learning has
not received a due acknowledgement in education and particularly in ESL/EFL. Building upon
humanistic notions such as social community, CL lays emphasis on group potentials and working
towards a common goal. This study, against the background of studies in literature, compared
individualistic and cooperative instructional approaches to writing accuracy and complexity
elicited through dictogloss. Participants in the study were 32 male and female EFL learners
taking spoken English courses. The writing tasks were also selected through a rating process by
the teachers and the students themselves from among topics mostly contained in their textbooks.
Accuracy and complexity were operationalized as the percentage of error-free sentences, and
the percentage of error-free sentences, respectively. Having met the assumptions, the
Independent-Samples T-test was employed to compare the means of accuracy and complexity
data across the two groups. Findings indicated a significantly higher accuracy for cooperative
group, but complexity did not vary as a matter of cooperative engagement in dictogloss-elicited
writing. Implications are discussed.