Comparison of the effects of shared, interactive and independent writing strategies on Improving One Paragraph Writing

Second Language writing has always been a matter of difficulty for foreign language learners and an appealing topic for researchers of the field. This study aimed to investigate the comparative effects of shared, interactive, and independent writing on non-Iranian EFL learners' written accuracy and complexity. To achieve this aim, 74 non-Iranian female and male EFL learners were selected through convenience sampling technique. The results of Oxford placement test indicated that their level of English proficiency was intermediate. Afterward, the participants were assigned to three experimental groups (i.e., shared, interactive, and independent writing). The syntactic accuracy was gauged in terms of t-units and complexity was calculated based in the number words in t-units. The results of statistical analysis manifested that the group which used interactive writing strategies outperformed the other two groups, and no significant differences were found between shared and independent writing groups. Moreover, the performance of the interactive writing group differed significantly from those of the other two groups. Hence, it was concluded that interactive writing strategy may lead to a more accurate and complex writing performance. This study might have implications language instructors, EFL learners, material developers, and syllabus designers.