Individual, Pair and Group Writing Activity: A Case Study of Undergraduate EFL Student Writing

The present study aimed to compare between individual and collaborative writing (pair and group of four) activities of 72 EFL students. The subjects of the study were assigned to produce their tasks by these three activities. Qualitative method was employed by using interview of nine students drawn from students with different levels of English proficiency (low, fair and high). It was focused on their perspectives towards skills practiced during working on written tasks- writing, thinking, participation, communication as well as their satisfaction of these activities. The results from content analysis demonstrated that overall the students practiced participation skills when doing individual and pair work. The students practiced writing skills when joining group work. With regard to the students’ satisfaction, low proficiency students in low group were likely to enjoy coauthoring activity either pair or group work. Their satisfaction seemed to increase according to the number of group members. This is important for writing teachers to provide this activity for low proficiency students as this may lower the students’ anxiety and foster their self-confidence, compared with completing tasks individually. On the contrary high proficiency students seemed to enjoy writing alone and were fairly satisfied group work. These students were likely to be more confident when performing the tasks individually or experienced some problems that might impede working collaboratively.