Producing Descriptive Texts in German L2: The effects of peer interaction on the planification and textual revision in a 7th grade class.

Abstract

This article summarizes the results of an exploratory study which concentrates on the effects of dyadic peer interaction in a writing task in the context of German L2 instruction. 17 seventh grade students in the Cycle d’ Orientation of Geneva wrote two texts under two different conditions: (1) planning in pairs, (2) corrected1 and expanded in pairs. The draft was individually written. A third text was planned, written and individually2 revised by all students. This was done in order to observe a possible effect of writing conditions in the different phases. The study shows that partner work has little effect on the different writing phases, but reveals tendencies, which could open new perspectives in L2 writing research.