Development of a structured process-oriented collaborative English essay writing support system

This study developed a structured environment to enhance collaborative English writing instruction for a variety of rhetorical essays by applying the scaffolding strategies, such as providing procedural facilitator, guided learning, using external representational scaffolds, and helping the student focus thinking on only those items that were important for the task. It enhances students´ experiences in writing planning and translating processes by helping students realize the process oriented nature of technical English writing. The writing support system guides students to write essays step-by-step. The “step-by-step” writing support system includes five steps for each rhetorical form. Step 1 helps students specify the title and essential features of the essay. Step 2 guides students to select an appropriate organizational structure. Step 3 helps students specify outlines of each paragraph. Step 4 guides students to define key elements of each paragraph. Finally, Step 5 provides an online editing interface to students for writing the essay by translating the planned essay structure into texts. Throughout the whole writing processes, the brainstorming scaffolds are provided to enhance the collaborative writing.