Qualitative Data from Collaboration at the Brainstorming Phase of Writing,

interviews with them also helped identify student views on writing in English, and how collaboration during the brainstorming phase helped to brainstorm ideas in a collaborative way. Participants attempted to work in pairs and obtained positive results when sharing their opinions with their peers to improve their writing. It was relevant for the students that their opinions were taken into consideration during the brainstorm- students felt comfortable when giving feedback on their essays. The students provided feedback, and that enabled them to highlight the effort their peers made while giving feedback on their work. The feedback also motivated them to see that this work was not useless.

Findings from the Post-Test

adequate to brainstorm ideas during the pre-writing stage of the writing process to improve learners’ writing performance. The application of a requires that students develop essays as part of their learning practice. The experimental group made more progress than the control group and graphic organizers along with web tools during the innovation.

in the Ecuadorian tertiary EFL classrooms. To give more emphasis on the structure works fast; it was organized and allowed me to classify relevant information before writing essays. Doing the essay step by step made consistent with this study.

Findings through the Interviews

The results of interviews disclose that working collaboratively among students aided them to create writing that is more appealing to them. Additionally, sharing ideas or thoughts during the brainstormingwork shows better quality of writing and positive feelings about col-stormed in the pre-test.

Working in pairs helped my partner and me to develop clear and well-structured ideas. It is the best way to

Collaborating with my peers made me feel secure and free, especially when I had to give opinions without feeling intimidated. The most challenging part was to classify the information - in the literature review, which says brainstorming ideas in collaboration with peers indicates that students work collaboratively with one or more partners to go through the writing process. an essay on my own at this point was competitive. I was able to create a poignant and clear essay based on the mentor text and the instructions I

The researchers have pointed out that a mentor text facilitates the students to order their ideas and improve their writing skills.

and Field Notes

felt rushed working in pairs. Despite using a structure and having peer collaboration during brainstorming in the prewriting stage, it appeared to be arduous for students to accomplish it. This obstacle seems to be related to the shortcomings in the organization and development - peer collaboration, and graphic organizers, students could write in an organized and coherent way. Modeling a mentor text, students could mat and has to be written considering three factors, which are content, language, and organization.

The following is another student’s opinion that stated that the This format works better. Do-

It also motivated me to see that this work was not in vain the teacher-researcher to create a positive classroom environment by assisting the students until they mastered the task.

The experimental group was reluctant to face the uncertainty, and they felt uncomfortable. The students thought that writing paragraphs did not need attention and organization. The following interviewee’s opinion made the researcher think about how students were mistaken about developing paragraphs. “I thought a paragraph contained only two that a paragraph must-have what the group was going to do, the students decided to collaborateprove their writing skills.

Findings through Components of Language

construct during the treatment had a marked increase, which means that students greatly improved the way they organized their ideas and paragraphs. For that, they applied the bubble chart and the t-chart that were provided during the activity. Another important result was thetervention. In every session of the lesson plan, students had to correct a marked increase, which means that students greatly improved their grammar skills. improved the students’ quality of writing. Padlet and Answer Garden web tools facilitated interaction and collaboration among peers.

Conclusions

In an Ecuadorian EFL context, where learners struggle to break barriers of language, writing in an organized and coherent way has become a hard task to develop in undergraduate students. The present rebetter results in the post-test. The results from the statistical analyses post-test.

One possible explanation for these obstacles found when atat tertiary levels are that researchers and practitioners have not given L2 learners’ writing skills might present complications when writing simple texts or essays. performance. Based on the results, the experimental group was sig- oration, and graphic organizers was key to facilitating students writing a good English text in an organized and coherent way. The students whoexperimental group was essential considering that its primary objective was to improve the learners’ writing skills. courage students to write who are not yet skilled in English language better disposition towards the implementation of the structure in comparison to the control group. The control group only developed the assignments given by the researcher.

Concerning the second research question, working in a collaborative way strengthens students who previously felt intimidated and reluctant to write because they felt uncomfortable sharing ideas and opinions with others, as noted in their interviews and the research- with their peers and improve their own. The use of Answer Garden and Padlet web tools also enhanced collaborative brainstorming, which motivated students to interact and brainstorm ideas freely and without much hesitation.

Referring to the third research question, learners’ perspectives on writing in English lead the researcher to build adequate approaches to enable learners to develop a good piece of writing. Regarding essays, students demonstrated very positive perceptions because they could get peer feedback, especially when developing the topics. Students were keen to make the necessary adjustments to their peers’ observations.

The results of the study clearly indicate that the use of the scaffolding strategies improved intermediate undergraduate students’ texts graph-essay structure to enhance intermediate undergraduate learners’ writing skills is still recommended.

Among the limitations of this study, the following stand out as when doing their assignments. Second, undergraduate EFL learners at this private university receive three hours of English class every week. Third, a small sample size might be another shortcoming that set. Fourth, the time might also be another constraint to improving the tervention phase was accordingly carried out in the allotted time. In other words, all the learning objectives and their assignments were suc-

positive learning outcomes.

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