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contributed to the content, style, and even the goal of writing and also the decisions how the group will function.
2. The Implementation of Collaborative Writing Technique
In response to the need for structured guidelines to make collaborative more effective, the researcher makes different roles of the students. One of them
plays a role as a helper and the other as a writer. Specific tasks need to be done by the helper and the writer when they write collaboratively. These steps are
described as follows: Step 1 is idea generation. In this step, the students are hoped to understand
important components of the descriptive text such as identification and description. The identification means the writer of the descriptive text identifies
phenomenon to be described and the description means the writer of the descriptive text describes parts, qualities, and characteristics. To help the writer
stimulate ideas their helper raise questions which mostly use wh-words as follows:
a. What treeanimal do you like?
b. What does it look like?
c. Where does it live? etc.
As the writers respond verbally to the questions, they jot down key words and are encouraged to add any relevant information they might want to write about. Then,
the pair reviews the keywords in the notes and determines if the order or organization should be changed. This could be indicated by numbering the ideas.
Alternatively, the ideas may seem to fall into obvious sections, which can be dealt with in turn. Such sections can be color-coded and the ideas belonging to them are
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underlined or highlighted with a marker. Pairs may also choose to draw lines linking or around related ideas, so that a semantic map is constructed.
In generating the students’ ideas is intended to motivate and brainstorm the students to get ideas or to generate ideas for the topic. The teacher leads the
helper to raise questions about descriptive texts in order to stimulate the writer ideas such as “What is your favorite animaltree?”, “What does it look like?”,
“Where does it live?” etc. Then, the writer takes those three questions and makes
a list to answer each one. Heshe then assigns the helper to review the writer’s key words, to develop the ideas into paragraph, and to organize the ideas in order.
Step 2 is drafting. In this step, the teacher emphasizes that writers do not have to worry much about spelling as they write their drafts. Rather, the stress
should be on allowing ideas to flow. This step aims to give the writer chances to begin writing a rough draft
based on the discovered ideas to review from the helper. To write the drafts, the writer is advised not care much more about the language, spelling or punctuation
or neatness. During the activity, the teacher goes around the class to provide assistance, guidance, and comments if they are necessary.
Step 3 is reading. In this step, the writer reads the draft. If heshe reads a word incorrectly, the helper provides support and gives some corrections.
This step gives the student chances to read the rough draft. The researcher asks the student helper to correct the draft. The helper may comment on the
clarity and relevance of the ideas and their coherence. The helper can give written
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comment or in orals to the writer. The writer reorganizes what has been written in the first rough draft and to refine ideas based on the feedback from the helper.
Step 4 is editing. In this step, the helper and the writer look at the draft together and consider what improvement might be made. Error of words, phrases,
or sentences could be marked. The writer and the helper inspect the draft more than once, check the five editing criteria:
1. Meaning
2. Order organization of the separate ideas in the text, organization
within a phrase or sentence, and organization of order of sentences 3.
Spelling 4.
Punctuation 5.
Style word choice and sentence structure While editing, the writer and helper consider the following question:
1. Does the helper understand what the writer wants to say? idea and
meaning 2.
Does the writing have a clear beginning, middle, and end? style 3.
Are the words spelled correctly? 4.
Is the punctuation correct and the right place? The order of question shows its relative important in writing. With the
question in mind, the helper marks area the writer has missed, the helper can also suggest other changes.
In this step, the teacher asks the pair to look at closely the draft and edits them by using the five editing criteria which refer to aspects of writing such as
content, organization, vocabulary, grammar, and mechanic. The pair is advised to check they used appropriate and varied linking devices and their work is cohesive
and logical. Then they may add new ideas; delete irrelevant sentences and information and rearrange ideas to improve the organization. After that they look
at vocabulary. They think about mere appropriate or specific vocabulary. Finally,
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they check content, organization, grammar, spelling and punctuation. The teacher provides editing guidelines for check list. After editing, they rewrite it for the final
writing version. Step 5 is best copy. The writer then copies out a neat or best version of the
corrected draft. The helper provides help when necessary, depending on the skill of the writer. In this case, the teacher asks the student writer to write the best
version of the product. The best copy is a joint product of the pair and is then hand in to the teacher.
Step 6 is the teacher evaluation. Teacher evaluation is the final step. In this step, students will have an opportunity to receive comments and instructive
feedback directly from the teacher. When the writer and helper submit in their best copy, the teacher will meet them and provide them with explicit writing and
grammatical instruction as well as corrective feedback. The teachers comments focus on meaningidea, order, style, spelling, and punctuation, which are the five
editing criteria stated in Step 4. The writers are then expected to review the correction and feedback together as a pair.
In evaluating, the teacher holds a conference by assigning the pair to exchange their composition to be proofread by other pairs. After that, the pair
discusses the corrections, feedback or comments from other pairs. If they still have problems with the corrections, feedback or comments from other pairs. At
the end of conference the teacher and students discuss remaining problems together. Next he asks the student writer to revise the composition based on the
correction, feedback given and comments from their friends or their teacher.
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Finally he asks the student writer to write the final composition and submit to the teacher or researcher.
After the students know steps of writing, the researcher provides opportunities to the students to write a short essay of a descriptive text. The
students are required to apply the technique in writing task to write a short essay about certain topic of descriptive texts.
So, in this research the researcher asks the students to make a pair and the student who plays as a helper or as a writer may have the more or less same
writing level and the role of them may be interchangeable. Besides, there are additional activities in step 1, 4, and step 6. The researcher adds the activities for
step 1, in which the students do the activities to generate the ideas for topic, then, the students elaborate the components of the text. In step 4, the five editing
criteria- meaning, order, spelling, punctuation, and style are changed into content, organization, vocabulary, grammar, and mechanic since the components of
writing which the teacher is going to score are the content, organization, vocabulary, grammar, and mechanics. In step 6, in giving some corrections and
feedback, it is better for the teacher to hold a conference. In the conference, students have a chance to negotiate the meaning by describing what they to
accomplish in the piece of writing and noticeable problems in doing this.
3. The Strengths and Weaknesses of Collaborative Writing Technique
