Collaborative writing: Fostering L2 development and mastery of writing conventions

The use of social technologies, such as wikis and chats, has brought a renewed attention to L2 collaborative writing. Yet, a question that still remains to be answered is the extent to which learners’ writing is enhanced when using these tools. This study, by analyzing learners’ individual and collaborative writing, (1) explores L2 learners’ approaches to the writing task in the wikis, (2) examines learners’ collaborative synchronous interactions when discussing content, structure and other aspects related to the elaboration of the writing task, and (3) provides learners’ perceptions on individual and collaborative writing and their impressions on the use of social tools in the FL writing class. Analysis of the data showed that while statistically significant differences were not evident in terms of fluency, accuracy and complexity when comparing the individual and collaborative assignments in the wiki, there were observable trends that inform us about the learners’ interactions with