Mutual learning between the Japanese native speakers and the second language learner through collaborative writing

This study is a report for teaching through collaborative writing, a method of teaching the Japanese as a second language (JSL) writing class where multiple learners are instructed to write a story together. This study adopted a creative writing relay, a form of practice that three writers (one Chinese student studying in Japan and two Japanese students) add one paragraph each to complete a 3-paragraph story. This collaborative writing enhances the solidarity between members in the same group (Storch: 2013), and by reading others’ writings and having others read his/her own writing, it helps students to pay more attention to the “writing” task than when writing alone. By dividing roles in a story, it provides students with an opportunity to recognize elements constitutive of a story and points that students must be cautious in order to help others understand his/her writing better. Moreover, it provides students with an opportunity to point out others’ mistakes and portions in their writings that are difficult to understand, and in so doing, it realizes more voluntary and active learning. The results of collaborative writing between Japanese native speakers and a Japanese language learner in this study revealed cultural differences in how they created the flow and the ending of a “story” (Holms:1998), which allows student to perceive the essence in the act of creating a narrative, and pragmatic as well as cultural differences behind it through collaborative work. I am certain that this teaching technique through collaborative work between native speakers of a particular language and foreign learners studying the language is expected to be effective in all foreign language education.