20 benefits of paired / group writing
This is one of those activities I’ve never read about in ideas and resources books but which is so simple and effective it must be in one somewhere.
It is the idea of communal writing – putting students into pairs, or groups of three, four, five… and getting each student in each pair / group to write exactly the same thing, down to the spelling, punctuation, paragraph breaks, etc.
(Of course each pair / group will give you a different piece of writing.)
My instructions to students are as follows:
You will write as a pair/group.
You will all write EXACTLY the same thing as the other student(s) in your pair / group.
You will all write at the same time (please do not make one draft and then let other students copy it later).
EVERYTHING you write in your pair / group must be the same. Check that your spelling, grammar and punctuation are the same as those of your partner.
If there are things you do not agree on, write them on a separate piece of paper and I’ll take it later, or quickly e-mail it to me.
Why do I think this is an utterly and totally fantastic exercise?
- It’s collaborative.
- It turns a writing activity into a multi-skills task.
- Students learn from each other.
- In my experience, students tend to think more about what to write, which produces better quality ideas. It’s great watching students have fun brainstorming and bouncing ideas off each other.
- It’s a good opportunity for students to share their writing exam tips and hints (in their L1 if necessary).
- The finished piece of writing is often of a quality better than if students were to write individually.
- Mistakes are more likely to be ironed out within the group, leaving any incorrect work to be errors, which are more useful for the teacher to work on.
- The activity contains many elements of process writing, but student controlled.
- If you assign group names and tell students their work will go up on the board, they tend to write better for the future audience of their written work.
- Students think and talk about spelling, punctuation and grammar.
- It makes a nice change from individual writing.
- It gives the teacher a whole lot more time to monitor – five pieces of writing among 20 students is a lot easier than 20 individual pieces of writing.
- It drastically cuts down on marking / correcting papers – I take one finished piece of writing from each group (making the assumption the other students in each group wrote the same thing) and correct it.
- Give feedback is quicker. I return a copy to each student in the group and talk to the group as a whole.
- Stronger students can help weaker students.
- The teacher can use the points students do not agree on for a boardwork correction stage.
- If students mail the teacher the points they do not agree on, (s)he has a ready-made sample of work to copy and paste into an activity on the smart board / projector. This sample is likely to be useful in monolingual groups in that it is likely to consist of common errors.
- It’s fantastic for whole class writing project work. You can swap students around so each new student adds ideas to the original group.
- The activity can be used for grammar test practice activities where accuracy is key.
- It can be used for spelling tests and is fun if you make it a competition – the group with the most correct answers being the winner.
I hope you try this and then write a comment below. Or you could just write a comment below 
Tags: fun, group work, pairwork, writing, written work
Hello Ourania
Thank you for your message. I think one of the major reasons students miss out the indefinite articles in dictations is that they don’t hear them. “A” and “an” are often absorbed into the preceding sounds or become part of the following sounds – e.g. – for “It’s an apple,” students might hear “Itsa napple,” “It sa napple” or its anapple” (there may be others). I find this takes a fair amount of “ear training” to get students accustomed to the problem here – the schwa sound and the oral gymnastics we use to stream speech via liaison, etc. I also get students to read sentences and focus on what happens to articles in their own speech – if they can understand this, they are more likely to hear the phonological changes when they listen (I think).
As a lesson activity – perhaps you could give students a script of what they are going to hear and blank out the indefinite articles and the word that comes before and after them. They write down what they hear. If they make mistakes (and write down “a napple”) this gives you something concrete to help them with.
Hope this helps
Sean
This works wonderfully, mutual suport benefits the weaker pupil. A useful extra to this is;-
get a different pair to read another’s contribution and then ask them to add onto that. This makes for a longer developed passage; plenty of collaboration and learning.
I am just wondering what type of writing you are having them do whenyou do this. Could you explain more an example lesson where you would utilize this method?
[...] Writing Exercise: Sean Banville, the man behind Breaking News English and a bunch of other websites used by ESL/EFL teachers all over the world, has written a post in his blog describing a neat Paired And Group Writing Activity. [...]
Hi Phil – can’t think of a type of writing I wouldn’t use this activity with – stories, narratives, letters, cause-effect, adverts, posters, creative writing, even process writing.
As for an example lesson, that’d be the same as a stage in a “normal” writing lesson in which you get students to write alone, except you get them to write, correct, amend… collaboratively.
Hope this answers your question
Sean, I have a web application that facilitates group writing.
Http://Rimmix.com
Its writing a story with a group of people. Students can also:
Attach and integrate photos, video and audio anywhere in the story.
Narrate from their cell phones.
Its been really hard to find teachers who are good and into technology. I noticed this blog in a search and was so happy I saw someone who gets it.
I’m looking for teachers who want to try this in the classroom and give me feedback. I’m a professor and have used it in my classrooms for a year before releasing it.
Would love to hear your thoughts.
My personal site is at omarelbaga.com.
Hello Mr. Sean,
Thank you for sharing your idea about paired and group writing. I think I will try this in my class. It is very interesting and I hope my students will benefit from this.
Regards
It’s an interesting idea. We aan use another technique.That is, we can Brainstrom key words on the same topic and distribute the words trooughout the class.Everyone will make a sentence. Compiling them together,we will get a product of group writing.
It’s better technique for dictation learning,I’m sure the students fun for study english and some times I tried disscusin methodh in order to students can know how to good writing.
Absolutely LOVE this idea! Thank You!
Thanks, I’m going to use this idea this week. I have my students keep a writing journal and make entries everyday. This will be a great variation!
Cooperative learning -is one of the best ways of MOTIVATING students .Thanks a lot, keep on sharing ideas !!!!!!!!!!!!!
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[...]Paired and Group Writing Activity « Sean Banville's Blog[...]…
Hi! I really liked the blog you posted about collaborative work. This shows the postitives that come from it. Not all teachers, however, use this correctly or effectively. This leaves students disliking group work and not wanting to do it.
Thanks for the great blog!
Hello!
I will try your paired reading with 1st, 2nd, 3rd graders in January. I like that they are all writing at the same time! I will use the whole, “write it correctly, leave early” incentive as well. These are heterogenous groups/pairs, right? Thank you for this great idea!
Hi! I’ve just had my kids working on this activity this morning, simply great!
They enjoyed that and they asked for more…I think it’s a great chance to involve ss at different levels (especially in large YL classes).
Thanks a lot!
Thank you Valentina for your feedback. I’m really glad your students enjoyed the activity.
Best wishes for a happy 2012,
Sean