Collaborative oral/aural revision in foreign language writing instruction

Although L1 and L2 writing research has demonstrated the positive effects of revision, few empirical studies have investigated the effects of a collaborative revision-based method in the foreign-language (FL) context. This investigation tests the hypothesis that a multistep, oral revision process carried out in the FL is measurably facilitative in developing basic composition skills and written fluency among adult learners. The study involves two groups of college-level learners of French (L1 = English) who were given two essay assignments, each requiring three separate drafts. In the control group, the instructor alone supplied written feedback; in the experimental group, revision took place in small groups, with participants reading their own papers aloud to their group partners, who responded orally according to a written protocol. Analysis of the final versions of the two essays collected from both groups showed that essays produced by the experimental group received significantly higher component and overall scores than those produced by the control group (p < .05). The findings suggest that systematic, collaborative revision produces in learners an awareness of the rhetorical structure of their own writing and an ability to self-correct surface errors, thereby helping them overcome inhibitions related to the formal aspects of writing.