Chapter 4: The Power of Working Together: Research on Collaborative Writing and Implications for Practice

Over the years, research has revealed many tools and strategies that educators can use to work effectively with ELLs. One of the strategies, often underrepresented in the research on second language writing, is the use of collaborative pairs/groups (Aminloo, 2013). Collaboration has shown to be an effective tool to support academic language development in ELLs (Wong-Fillmore & Snow, 2005), especially when students have the opportunity to interact with their fluent English-speaking peers (Faltis, Arias, & Mamíez-Marín et al., 2010; Rumberger & Gándara, 2004). Collaboration can be used in conjunction with writing to help ELLs develop their writing skills, but also to help them grow individually with increased motivation and a more positive perception of themselves as legitimate writers.