EFL Students’ Perceptions of Collaborative Writing in a Private University, Vietnam

Abstract

Writing is widely held as the most important but sophisticated skill in learning foreign languages, including English. In particular, in college writing, students need to acquire and improve their writing performance in order to communicate ideas to intended audience or academia. Thus, as a communicative activity, writing cannot be done in isolation. Instead, collaborative writing has been advocated as a socially constructed activity done by more individuals to produce a particular text. However, individual writing still dominates in the writing context in Vietnam, thereby deterring students from writing collaboratively with others. This paper therefore seeks the students’ perceptions about collaborative writing. Data collected for this study include questionnaire and interviews. Participants were147 students of English at a university in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. The findings indicate that students had positive perceptions about collaborative writing. Implications for collaborative writing are also provided.