foreign language essay pdf

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Front Psychol

Learning English as a Foreign Language Writing Skills in Collaborative Settings: A Cognitive Load Perspective

1 School of Foreign Languages and Literature, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

Slava Kalyuga

2 School of Education, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Associated Data

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Learning to write in a foreign language is a complex cognitive process. The process-genre approach is a common instructional practice adopted by language teachers to develop learners’ writing abilities. However, the interacting elements of procedural knowledge, linguistic knowledge, and generic knowledge in this approach may exceed the capacity of an individual learner’s working memory, thus actually hindering the acquisition of writing skills. According to the collective working memory effect, it was hypothesized that teaching writing skills of English as a foreign language by adopting a process-genre approach in collaborative conditions could lead to better writing performance, lower cognitive load, and higher instructional efficiency. The reported experiment compared learning writing skills of English as a foreign language in individual and collaborative instructional conditions from a cognitive load perspective, a rarely adopted approach in this field. The results indicated that the collaborative instructional condition was more effective and efficient than the individual instructional condition in improving the quality of written products as well as in optimizing the cognitive (working memory) load experienced by the learners. Measures of cognitive load were used to support the cognitive load theory’s interpretation of the results, which is the unique contribution of this research study to the field.

Introduction

Learning to write in a foreign language is a complex problem-solving process, requiring not only a range of skills from writing English letters to composing complete essays but also the ability to make claims and provide appropriate supporting details ( Kirkland and Saunders, 1991 ; Bruning and Horn, 2010 ; Howell et al., 2018 ). Students need to develop the skills of generating, organizing, and refining ideas by being involved in complex activities, such as brainstorming, discussing, outlining, drafting, monitoring, and revising ( Raimes, 1992 ; Hyland, 2003a ). Cognitive load theory aims at designing effective instructional materials and procedures to facilitate learners’ acquisition of complex knowledge and skills based on the mechanisms of human cognitive architecture ( Van Merriënboer and Sweller, 2005 ; Sweller et al., 2011 ). According to this theory, learners can build new knowledge about writing processes not only with the help of explicit formal instruction or through personal reading but also using problem solving via individual or collaborative efforts (through personal introspection or pair/group discussions).

The collective working memory effect in cognitive load theory refers to the working memory space created by communicating and coordinating knowledge by each collaborator ( Kirschner et al., 2011 , 2018 ; Sweller et al., 2011 ). An individual who studies alone processes all the interacting elements of the instructional material in his or her working memory. By contrast, under a collaborative learning condition, all the interactive elements can be distributed among the working memories of group members. This effect allows a better understanding of cognitive processes in collaborative learning environments and the conditions under which such environments provide more efficient instructional options.

However, to our best knowledge, differences between the effectiveness of individual and collaborative instructional approaches in learning writing skills of English as a foreign language from a cognitive load perspective have never been investigated ( Kirschner et al., 2011 , 2018 ). Moreover, despite that collaborative writing as a teaching strategy has been actively implemented in foreign language classrooms since the 1990s ( McDonough, 2004 ; Shehadeh, 2011 ), the issue of how developing writing skills in collaborative settings impact learners’ cognitive characteristics has not been investigated extensively. In addition, more empirical research should be done to examine how learners in collaborative learning conditions would perform on individual writing tasks rather than on co-authoring tasks in the post-intervention phase ( Storch, 2005 ; Chen, 2019 ). Accordingly, the experimental study reported in this paper was conducted in an attempt to fill these gaps.

Models and Approaches to Teaching Writing Skills

Cognitive model of writing processes.

Writing involves a range of cognitive activities. Flower and Hayes (1981) proposed a cognitive model of writing processes, which regarded writing as a decision-making process, consisting of a range of cognitive activities orchestrated in cyclical or recursive rather than linear orders ( Racelis and Matsuda, 2013 ). Flower and Hayes (1981) argued that a writing process “involves three major elements which are reflected in the three units of the model: the task environment, the writer’s long-term memory, and the writing process” (p. 369). This cognitive model generally corresponds to the three phases of writing: planning, translating, and revising phases. The three cognitive processes do not necessarily appear in a linear order but can happen at any moment in the writing process ( Berninger et al., 1996 ; Baaijen and Galbraith, 2018 , p. 196). Jones (2014) highlighted that the cognitive model of writing processes emphasized the functions of planning (i.e., generating ideas) and translating ideas into texts. Even though Flower and Hayes (1981) stressed that the three types of cognitive activities were recursive, they did not identify the “distinctions involving the temporal dimensions (before, during, or after translation) and spatial dimensions on which the planning and reviewing/revising processes operate (whole text or a portion of it)” ( Berninger et al., 1996 , p. 198). The distinctions are of great significance to instructions as an awareness of stages or phases in writing could help learners internalize the phases of writing, which was evidenced in Jones’ (2014) study that some of the participants were not fully aware of making distinctions between planning and translating while others were struggled with how to organize ideas in the writing process. It can be assumed that explicit instruction in planning and organizing ideas in the pre-writing stage could improve writing quality. Orchestrating the cognitive activities into stages or phases in this study attempted to actualize these abstract activities for instructional purposes. However, as Bizzell (1982) and Atkinson (2003) noted, this post-cognitivist approach to writing may neglect the genre nature of writings—shared features of texts shaped through social conventions. Therefore, it is of equal significance to teach genre knowledge when adopting the cognitive model of writing processes in teaching writing skills.

Approaches to Teaching Writing Skills

The genre approach and process approach to teaching writing skills have been used extensively to promote learners’ abilities to write in English ( Hyland, 2003a , b ; Muncie, 2009 ; Keen, 2020 ). The process-based approach in writing instruction, which was introduced in the 1980s, usually consists of four stages: prewriting, writing, revising, and editing ( Tribble, 1996 ). Participants in Keen’s (2020) study adopted a process approach to learning skills: discussing topics in small groups, writing ideas about the topic, writing first drafts, carrying out peer reviews, writing second drafts, and sharing their accounts with the whole class. It was found that the participants developed a sense of ownership and learned how to write more effectively. Even though Keen (2020) used young learners of English as a first language as research subjects, he identified the beneficial role of procedural learning in cultivating students’ writing abilities. However, it should be noted that such approaches demonstrate “how some writers write, they do not reveal why they make certain linguistic and rhetorical choices” ( Hyland, 2003b , p. 19), as the process-based approach “is seen as predominantly to do with linguistic skills such as planning and drafting, and there is much less emphasis on linguistic knowledge” ( Badger and White, 2000 , p. 154). In a response, ( Hyland, 2003b , 2008 ) put forward a genre-based approach to teach writing skills, in which genre is conceptualized as “a term for grouping texts together, representing how writers typically use language to respond to recurring situations” (p. 544). The genre-based approach emphasizes explicit instructions for communicative purposes, key language features, and structural patterns.

Graham and Sandmel (2011) advised that “advocates of process writing instruction integrate other effective writing practices into this approach” (p. 405). Researchers (e.g., Flowerdew, 1993 ; Badger and White, 2000 ) have endeavored to integrate the process-approach and genre-based approach in teaching writing skills of English as a foreign language as the two approaches could be mutually complementary ( Raimes, 1991 ; Badger and White, 2000 ; Racelis and Matsuda, 2013 ; Deng et al., 2014 ; Huang and Zhang, 2020 ; Jiang et al., 2021 ; Rahimi and Zhang, 2021 ). For example, Flowerdew (1993) introduced a process consisting of six types of activities to explicitly teach the process of learning specific genres. Badger and White (2000) proposed the process-genre approach to teaching writing skills, which consists of several stages starting from understanding a situation to completing a draft. By process-genre approach, Badger and White (2000) emphasized the significant roles of language skills, situational knowledge, and processes in cultivating writing abilities. Learning to write also means learning the techniques of self-regulating cognitive activities and procedures. Students who learn how to regulate the writing procedures collaboratively could transfer the knowledge when writing independently ( Teng, 2020 ).

Learning English Writing Skills Through Collaboration

Taking a social stance, a process-genre approach to teaching writing skills encourages interactions and collaborations, which involves some kinds of collaborative activities such as “modeling, eliciting, supporting, probing, and suggesting alternatives or extension” to a learner’s initial attempts ( Wette, 2017 , p. 72). Dillenbourg (1999) and Prince (2004) defined collaborative learning as an instructional method through which students work together in small groups to pursue common learning or writing goals. Although collaborative learning, in general, has a long history of research, learning writing skills through collaboration was not actively implemented in foreign language classrooms until the late 1990s ( McDonough, 2004 ). Learning writing skills through collaboration, with a primary aim of learning curricular content, focuses on both deconstruction and construction processes ( Karnes et al., 1997 ). Granado-Peinado et al. (2019) found that participants who received collaborative practice and explicit instructions about writing synthesis identified more proportions of arguments and higher levels of integration of different sources than those in the collaborative practice conditions without instructions about writing synthesis. However, their research showed that providing collaboration opportunities does not sufficiently warrant effective learning, which also needs not only guides about how to collaborate but also explicit instructions about learning tasks. Accordingly, Teng (2020) investigated the effect of collaboratively modeling text structure and explicitly teaching self-regulated strategies on younger English learners’ abilities to write summarizations and essays. After 1-month intervention, it was found that participants who adopted self-regulated strategies and collaboratively modeled text structures demonstrated better performance than the participants in the control group in terms of the three measurements. It should be noted that the available research studies have reported mixed results about whether learning writing skills through collaborations could effectively improve the quality of written products or not ( McDonough, 2004 ; McDonough and De Vleeschauwer, 2019 ; Matos, 2021 ). For example, some studies (e.g., Storch, 2005 ; Fernández Dobao, 2012 ; Hsu and Lo, 2018 ) indicated that texts written by collaborative learners were more grammatically accurate than those by individual ones. However, it has also been reported that learners in the individual learning conditions produced more syntactically complex text than collaborative learners ( McDonough et al., 2018 ). The divergent findings in the collaborative learning of writing skills can be related to the following three issues: the lack of explicit collaborative tasks in the learning phases, not considering cognitive aspects in the experimental designs, and not evaluating individual writing outcomes. Accordingly, Kirschner et al. (2009) recommended that research in collaborative learning should directly measure learning outcomes in a test condition, focus on one aspect of the learning goals at a time, and investigate the performance of individual learners instead of the group as a whole. They also advocated that research studies need to consider human cognitive architecture to better understand and compare individual and collaborative learning. In addition, ( Berninger et al., 1996 ) noted that “working memory, and not only long-term memory, is involved in writing development” (p. 199), as the cognitive activities in relation to the task environment and writing process should be carried out in working memory.

Cognitive Load Theory

Cognitive load theory aims at designing effective instructional materials and procedures to optimize learner cognitive resources in the process of acquiring complex knowledge structures ( Sweller, 2010 ; Sweller et al., 2011 ). Cognitive load refers to the working memory resources needed for completing a particular learning task. Theoretically, learners may experience two types of cognitive load: intrinsic cognitive load and extraneous cognitive load ( Van Merriënboer and Sweller, 2005 ; Sweller et al., 2011 ). Intrinsic cognitive load is defined as the working memory resources demanded by the innate complexity of information that a learner must learn ( Sweller, 2010 ). Extraneous cognitive load, conceptualized as the working memory load that is unnecessary and extrinsic to instructional goals, is generated by the presentation manner and structure of the instructional material ( Van Merriënboer and Sweller, 2005 ; Sweller et al., 2011 ).

The level of cognitive load experienced by the learners is determined by the level of element interactivity which refers to the degree to which information elements or components of a learning task should be processed simultaneously for meaningful learning ( Sweller et al., 2011 ). For example, learning new vocabularies in a list can be considered as low in element interactivity, as individual vocabularies can be acquired without reference to other information in the list. By contrast, most writing tasks have high levels of element interactivity, as the writing process involves a relatively large number of interconnected elements of information, as well as cognitive, metacognitive, and socio-affective activities ( Negari, 2011 ).

The levels of cognitive load that learners experience can be measured by subjective rating scales of effort, a simple and reliable instrument first adopted by Paas (1992) . In this type of rating method, learners were asked to recall, reflect, and report the level of mental effort during their previous learning after they completed instructional activities. Even though subjective rating scales were capable of measuring the overall cognitive load, researchers also needed information about the levels of particular types of cognitive load that learners experience ( Paas et al., 2003 ; DeLeeuw and Mayer, 2008 ). Leppink et al. (2013) proposed a more recent version of subjective rating scales: three items on intrinsic cognitive load, three items on extraneous cognitive load, and four items on germane cognitive load. However, the results of confirmatory factor analysis in Jiang and Kalyuga’s (2020) study showed that the two-factor (intrinsic and extraneous) model was an acceptable fit. Therefore, the cognitive load rating questionnaire in this study, which was developed on the basis of Leppink et al.’s (2013) version, adopted the two-factor model.

Cognitive load ratings are frequently combined with learning performance measures to calculate the relative instructional efficiency for different learning environments. Instructional efficiency in this study was calculated using Paas and van Merriënboer’s (1993) formula E = ( P-R )/√ 2 , in which E stands for efficiency, P for performance z-score, and R for cognitive load rating z-score. In this study, the average of intrinsic cognitive load and extraneous cognitive load ratings were used to calculate the cognitive load z-score. According to this formula, higher values of instructional efficiency are achieved in situations where learning performance is high and cognitive load is low; lower values of instructional efficiency occur under conditions where learning performance is low and cognitive load is high.

Collective Working Memory Effect

Cognitive load theory considers a social interaction situation as a collective working memory system and extends the instructional focus from individual learning to collaborative learning. A collective working memory system can be developed from individual cognitive systems through collaboration, coordination, and communication. The collective working memory effect happens when learners acquire knowledge more effectively and efficiently through collaborating with others than through learning individually ( Sweller et al., 2011 ). The collective working memory space constituted by multiple working memories has a larger capacity and longer duration than any of the constituents in individual working memories. This concept was supported by Dillenbourg (1999) who argued that in the collaborative conditions, “the horizontal division of labor into, for instance, task-level and strategy-level tasks, reduces the amounts of processing performed by each individual” (p. 10). Villarreal and Gil-Sarratea (2019) found that the texts produced by pairs were more accurate and grammatically complex than those by individual learners. They attributed the difference partially to collective scaffolding.

Collective working memory refers to the working memory space created by communicating and coordinating knowledge by each collaborator ( Kirschner et al., 2018 ). An individual who studies alone processes all the interacting elements of the instructional material in his or her working memory. By contrast, under a collaborative learning condition, all the interactive elements can be distributed among the working memories of group members. The multiple working memories constitute a collective working memory space that has a larger capacity and longer duration than individual working memory. As a result, an individual learner in the collaborative instructional condition may experience lower levels of the cognitive load than a learner who studies alone. The collective working memory effect, a recently developed cognitive load theory effect, occurs when learners learn better through collaborating with other learners than through learning alone ( Sweller et al., 2011 ). This effect assumes that “students working in groups have more processing capacity than students working individually” ( Janssen et al., 2010 , p. 139). Even though interacting with group members in the collaborative learning condition may generate extraneous cognitive load, the interactive process should be beneficial as elaborating and eliciting could result in forming more advanced knowledge ( Dillenbourg, 1999 ).

Under the individual learning condition, all the interacting elements of the learning task are processed in the individual learner’s working memory. By contrast, learners who collaborate with others in their learning distribute all the interactive elements among the working memories of group members. Consequently, a collaborator would experience lower levels of the cognitive load than an individual learner. This assumption was supported by Zhang et al. (2011) , who compared the effectiveness of collaborative and individual instructional approaches in learning the complex tasks of designing web pages. They found that the participants in the collaborative learning condition demonstrated better performance and experienced a lower level of the cognitive load than the individual learners.

Task complexity or element interactivity can influence the effectiveness of collaborative learning. For simple learning tasks, individual learning is expected to be more effective and efficient, as the transaction costs associated with sharing knowledge and coordinating communication will nullify the benefits offered by collaborative learning. By contrast, for complex tasks, the benefits offered by the collective working memory could be higher than the transaction costs, thus fostering efficient learning. Kirschner et al. (2009) found that individual learners performed better in remembering biological knowledge (simple tasks) than learners in collaborative conditions, whereas collaborative learners performed better in transferring the skills to solving similar problems (complex tasks) than individual learners. Similar findings were reported by Kirschner et al. (2011) who found that learning low-complexity biological tasks individually was more effective and efficient while learning high-complexity tasks benefited more from the collaborative approach.

Experimental Study

Learning writing skills of English as a foreign language has long been regarded as a complex process that usually generates a heavy cognitive load ( Vanderberg and Swanson, 2007 ; Kellogg, 2008 ). Based on the review of literature on cognitive load theory and writing learning, the study was conducted to examine the following research hypotheses:

• (1) Participants taught through the process-genre approach in the collaborative learning condition would demonstrate better individual writing performances than participants in the individual learning condition.
• (2) Participants taught through the process-genre approach in the collaborative learning condition would experience lower levels of the cognitive load than participants in the individual learning condition.

The reported experiment focused on the effect of collaboration in creating a collective working memory among the members of a group. Previous research studies seldom included controlled randomized experiments and assessed learners’ writing products as a means to evaluate the effectiveness of collaborative learning. Therefore, according to the collective working memory effect, the reported experiment was designed to test the hypotheses that learners of English as a foreign language in the collaborative process-genre instructional condition would achieve better individual learning outcomes in terms of writing skills, experience lower levels of cognitive load, and have higher instructional efficiency than learners in the individual process-genre instructional condition.

Materials and Methods

Participants.

The study adopted a purposive convenience sampling method; 64 undergraduate students (29 females) voluntarily participated in this experiment after reading the recruitment notice. They studied at a technological university in Shandong Province, China. They were also briefed about the aims, the procedures, their rights through the study, and their rights to access the research results. They were requested to return the signed consent form if they determined to participate. These college students were on average 21.5 years old and had spent 11 years learning English as a foreign language at the time of the experiment, so they could be regarded as having an intermediate level of English proficiency. They were randomly allocated into the individual learning condition (IL) ( n = 32) and the collaborative learning condition (CL) ( n = 32). The participants in the collaborative learning condition were further randomly allocated into eight groups with four members in each. This arrangement was based on the rationale that groups consisting of no more than six members could maximize participation by all group members ( Herner et al., 2002 ).

The participants were required to write an essay as a pretest. The design of the pretest was based on Task 2 of the writing section in International English Language Test System (IELTS): General Training . Two independent raters examined their writings by complying with the IELTS writing band descriptors . These raters were proficient IELTS tutors with experience in applying the band descriptors in evaluating IELTS essays. An independent samples t -test indicated that the pre-test scores of the IL group ( M = 5.16, SD = 0.91) were not significantly different from the CL group ( M = 5.00, SD = 1.02), t (58) = 0.61, p > 0.05.

The instructional material was about how to write complaint letters. The development of the teaching material was based on the book The Official Cambridge Guide to IELTS authored by Cullen et al. (2014) . The experimental materials included four teaching components (structural features teaching, language features teaching, model essay teaching, and essay planning teaching), one essay planning phase, one testing phase (essay writing), and one subjective cognitive load rating phase ( Appendix ).

The instruction was delivered in seven phases (see Figure 1 ). The participants in the individual learning condition were allocated to a lecture room. Each participant sat with at least 1-m distance from other participants to prevent collaboration and interference. The 84-member CL instructional groups were put in one lecture room. Each group kept a distance of at least 5 m from other groups to prevent collaboration and interference between groups, if any. The participants in the IL condition were required to complete all the seven phases individually; on the other hand, the participants in the CL condition completed the first five learning phases collaboratively, but the last two phases were completed independently. Associated questions were provided for thinking (for individual learners) and discussing (for collaborative learners) as Proske and Kapp (2013) argued that “learning questions might also be suitable to support the construction of a richly interconnected situation model of a writing topic which in turn may allow writers to produce better text products” (p. 1340). As it was generally believed that cognitive activities involved in writing procedures were recursive and dynamic ( Flower and Hayes, 1981 ), the participants were reminded that they did not necessarily treat the phases as absolute linear orders and had the freedom to revisit the previous phase or skip to next one when they feel necessary.

Seven phases of the research study.

The first part of the instructional materials (10 min) introduced the purposes and structural features of complaint letters, as well as the functions of each structural component. The structural features of complaint letters covered in this study include the following: the introductory paragraph elicits the purpose of complaint letters; the body paragraphs elaborate on the problems that letters are about and the suggested solutions; and the conclusion paragraph generally states the expectations and closes the letter. The associated questions for thinking (for individual learners) and discussion (for collaborative learners) were: How do structural features reflect communicative purposes? and Are there alternative structures for this genre? The second part (10 min) elaborated on the common language features of complaint letters, such as phrases and sentence structures for specifying the problem, outlining the consequences, making and justifying a specific claim, and so on, with the questions for thinking and discussion being: Are there alternative ways to give reasons and solutions? By using graphic organizers, the third part (10 min) showed the essential steps in planning writing. The question for introspection and discussion in this phase was: If there exist alternative structures, how can these steps in essay planning be adapted to suit those structures? The fourth part (15 min) introduced a model letter, in which the participants were required to identify the structural features, explain the functions of each feature, and the language features that were used for achieving the purposes. The associated questions in this phase were: What tenses have been used mainly in each paragraph? and Why tenses were used in these ways? The fifth instructional phase (10 min) required the participants to plan a letter on a given topic and scenario. In these five phases, the participants in the collaborative instructional conditions were encouraged to learn the materials through collaboration, share their understandings, ask questions, and provide responses, while the individual learners were encouraged to talk to themselves or engage in an internal conversation. In the sixth phase (15 min), the participants were required to individually write a letter on the topic they discussed in the fifth phase by using the skills learned in the first four phases. The last phase of the experiment (5 min) was a subjective cognitive load rating questionnaire ( Appendix ).

Traditionally, subjective ratings of working memory load have proven to be able to collect reliable and valid estimations of mental load in a non-intrusive way ( Jiang and Kalyuga, 2020 ). The cognitive load rating questionnaire was developed from the questionnaires designed by Leppink et al. (2013) , with the first six items on intrinsic cognitive load and the last six items on extraneous cognitive load. The questionnaire was written in Chinese, the research participants’ first language. The participants were asked to evaluate the appropriateness of a certain aspect of the instructional design that could orchestrate their mental resources to facilitate learning by choosing a number on a Likert-type scale, ranging from 0 (not at all the case) to 10 (completely the case). In addition, the instructor was available to clarify and explain puzzles and queries, if any.

The quality of the letters was assessed according to the IELTS General Training Writing Task 1: Writing band descriptors published by the British Council. The band descriptors cover four categories: task achievement, coherence and cohesion, lexical resource, and grammatical range and accuracy. Each category has the 9-point scale, ranging from one to nine. Each letter was given one score for each category, and the sum of the scores in the four categories was the rater’s score for the letter. The highest mark for a letter was 36. Two independent raters assessed students’ letters. The average value of two raters’ markings was used as the final score of the letter. The inter-rater reliability was calculated using a Person intra-class correlation (ICC). The ICC measure of 0.92 indicated a high degree of inter-rater reliability.

Table 1 shows means and standard deviations of the letter scores, the scores of each category, the ratings of intrinsic, extraneous, and overall cognitive load, and the instructional efficiency for the two instructional conditions. The reliability of the subjective cognitive load rating scale as measured by Cronbach’s alpha was 0.76.

Means and standard deviations for essay writing performance scores, individual category score, subjective ratings of cognitive load, and instructional efficiency for two instructional groups.

An analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was conducted to compare the two instructional groups’ letter scores, scores of each subcategory, the ratings of intrinsic cognitive load, extraneous cognitive load, and overall cognitive load, as well as the indicators of instructional efficiency. Levene’s test was conducted ( p > 0.05) and the assumptions were satisfied. After controlling for the effect of pretest, it was found that the participants in the CL instructional condition demonstrated significantly better letter writing performance [ F (1, 61) = 27.40, p = 0.001, partialη 2 = 0.31] and significantly higher instructional efficiency [ F (1, 61) = 31.97, p = 0.001, partialη 2 = 0.34] than those in the IL instructional condition. In terms of category scores, the learners in the CL teaching condition significantly outperformed those learners in the IL teaching condition in all the four subscales: task achievement [ F (1, 61) = 15.72, p = 0.001, partialη 2 = 0.21], coherence and cohesion [ F (1, 61) = 30.64, p = 0.001, partialη 2 = 0.33], lexical resource [ F (1, 61) = 17.86, p = 0.001, partialη 2 = 0.23], as well as grammatical range and accuracy [ F (1, 61) = 41.76, p = 0.001, d = 0.41]. The participants in the IL instructional condition experienced significantly higher levels of intrinsic cognitive load [ F (1, 61) = 7.68, p = 0.007, partialη 2 = 0.11], significantly higher levels of extraneous cognitive load [ F (1, 61) = 5.83, p = 0.020, partialη 2 = 0.09], and significantly higher levels of overall cognitive load [ F (1, 61) = 12.02, p = 0.001, partialη 2 = 0.17] than the participants in the CL condition.

The covariate, which is pretest in the study, was significantly related to the letter writing performance, which means that the participants in the CL condition had significantly better performance than the students in the IL condition in terms of the overall scores [ F (1, 61) = 143.44, p = 0.001, r = 0.84] as well as the four subscales: task achievement [ F (1, 61) = 127.86, p = 0.001, r = 0.81], coherence and cohesion [ F (1, 61) = 128.09, p = 0.001, r = 0.82], lexical resource [ F (1, 61) = 125.52, p = 0.001, r = 0.82], and grammatical range and accuracy [ F (1,61) = 146.29, p = 0.001, r = 0.84]. In addition, cognitive load ratings and instructional efficiency were related to the covariate, pretest. The correlation to the covariate, pretests, was also observed in intrinsic cognitive load, overall cognitive load, and instructional efficiency. Students in the CL instructional condition had lower cognitive load ratings and higher instructional efficiency than the participants in the IL condition: intrinsic cognitive load [ F (1, 61) = 5.49, p = 0.02, r = 0.28], overall cognitive load [ F (1, 61) = 4.58, p = 0.036, r = 0.07], and instructional efficiency [ F (1, 61) = 62.88, p = 0.001, r = 0.51]. However, it should be noted that the covariate, pretest, was not significantly related to extraneous cognitive load [ F (1, 61) = 0.42, p > 0.05], which indicates that the differences in participants’ perception of extraneous cognitive load could be largely attributed to the dependent variable, instructional conditions.

The reported experiment was conducted to test the hypotheses generated by cognitive load theory that learners of English as a foreign language in a collaborative instructional condition would show better writing performance, lower levels of cognitive load, and higher instructional efficiency than learners in an individual learning condition. Even though relations to the covariate, pretest, were observed, the results of the study generally supported the hypotheses. As for the first hypothesis, this randomized experimental study found that the students in the collaborative learning condition demonstrated higher overall post-test letter writing scores and higher subcategory scores (task achievement, coherence and cohesion, lexical resource, as well as grammatical range and accuracy) than the participants in the individual learning condition. The second research hypothesis was also supported as the participants in the collaborative learning condition indicated lower overall cognitive load ratings than the participants in the individual learning condition. It was also found that the collaborative learning condition generated higher instructional efficiency in terms of developing writing skills than the individual learning condition. Moderate and significant negative correlations were found between the ratings of intrinsic cognitive load and the letter-writing performance scores for both instructional conditions. The results demonstrated the collective working memory effect ( Kirschner et al., 2009 , 2018 ; Sweller et al., 2011 ) in the domain of learning writing skills by learners of English as a foreign language. As predicted by cognitive load theory, in the case of complex learning tasks such as writing in a foreign language, the benefits of collective working memory exceeded the possible disadvantages of dealing with transaction costs involved in coordinating individual working memories.

First, the study contributed to the research area of writing in a foreign language by conceptualizing the research and interpreting the findings from the perspective of cognitive load theory. In an attempt to account for the role of specific cognitive mechanisms in improving writing performance, it is possible to assume that the collaborative instructional approach had created an effective pool of knowledge about language and a pool of cognitive resources that beneficially influenced the quality of written products ( Storch, 2005 ; Strobl, 2014 ). The interactions in collaborative instructional conditions could trigger more learning-relevant cognitive mechanisms, for example, knowledge elaboration and internalization which are essential for meaningful and effective learning. These learning mechanisms could enable learners to organize information into ordered structures and integrate new information with prior knowledge structures ( Dillenbourg, 1999 ; Kalyuga, 2009 ). In the process of collaborative learning, theme-related knowledge structures would be retrieved from learners’ long-term memory and function collectively as distributed cognition including “internal minds, external representations, and interactions among individuals” ( Klein and Leacock, 2011 , p. 133). The distributed cognition could evolve through members’ contributions using stating claims, supporting or challenging others’ opinions, providing supporting details, and so on. The mental activities in sharing, understanding, and negotiating meaning involve expressive or introspective elaborations, resulting in conceptual changes in group members ( Dillenbourg, 1999 ). As more sources of information come to the group memory, learners would exercise more knowledge elaborations to establish links between new information and the existing knowledge structures, leading to better performance measures. The multiple learning phases in the collaborative conditions offered collaborators more opportunities to use the language-related episodes (LRE) and task-related episodes, which were supposed to benefit their writing.

Second, the findings are consistent with the collective working memory effect, in that learning English as a foreign language writing skills in the collaborative instructional condition is more effective and efficient than in the individual learning condition ( Kirschner et al., 2009 ; Retnowati et al., 2018 ). As learning tasks used for teaching English as a foreign language writing skills are high in element interactivity, and multiple factors (such as linguistic and situational knowledge, understanding of audience and purposes, etc.) affect the learning process, it can be assumed that the participants in each collaborative group would provide collective scaffolding, resulting in learning more sophisticated writing skills in terms of lexical accuracy, grammatical complexity, logic organization, and so on, in the learning phases and consequently in the better performance of these learners in the testing phase than the participants in the individual learning condition.

In addition, this study also indicates that adopting a process-genre approach in a collaborative condition could lead to significantly better writing performance than in an individual learning condition, which is particularly consistent with research studies on developing self-regulation of writing processes and generic knowledge through collaborations (e.g., Graham and Sandmel, 2011 ; Jones, 2014 ; Wette, 2017 ; Villarreal and Gil-Sarratea, 2019 ; Teng, 2020 ). According to the genre approach to teaching writing skills, effective instructional practices should “offer writers an explicit understanding of how texts in target genres are structured,” teach “the lexico-grammatical patterns which typically occur in its different stages,” and cultivate writers to command “an awareness of target genres and an explicit grammar of linguistic choices” ( Hyland, 2003b , p. 26). However, if all lexical, syntactical, structural, and logical contents were taught without appropriate sequencing and prioritizing, high levels of cognitive load could be generated. Therefore, segmenting a learning task into several phases can ameliorate the complexity of information as the number of interacting elements would be reduced. For example, in a controlled randomized experiment, Klein and Ehrhardt (2015) found that organizing instructional tasks into manageable parts helped learners generate more balanced claims and reduced high-achieving students’ cognitive load in writing persuasion texts as measured by the perceived difficulty of their learning.

Furthermore, the results of the reported study are also consistent with previous research in the field of collaborative learning of writing skills (e.g., Shehadeh, 2011 ; McDonough et al., 2018 ), in that the learners in the collaborative instructional condition had better qualities of prewriting/writing performance than the learners in the individual instructional condition. Still, this study contributed to the area of collaborative writing research in two novel ways. First, differently from most of the previous research which required all learners in a collaborative group to write a common single text, this study required every member in a collaborative condition to write a separate text, and the quality of individual texts was assessed to compare the effectiveness of individual and collaborative learning conditions on the same grounds. This method of measuring learning gains by assessing the quality of individual writing products is more valid and reliable according to Kirschner et al. (2009) , as it better fits the learning goals. Second, the use of subjective ratings of participants’ cognitive load in learning and the calculation of instructional efficiency provided additional evidence to support a cognitive load interpretation of the results as the case of the collective working memory effect.

The reported study still has some limitations that require further research. First, this study did not consider the foreign language proficiency of the participants as a variable in collaborative teaching of English as a foreign language writing skill. According to the expertise reversal effect in cognitive load theory, the effectiveness of specific instructional techniques and procedures depends on the levels of the learner’s prior knowledge in the domain ( Kalyuga et al., 2003 ; Kalyuga, 2007 ; Sweller et al., 2011 ). This effect has been demonstrated with all other instructional methods developed by cognitive load theory. It is likely that this effect also applies to the collective working memory effect. For example, Storch (2011) claimed that second language proficiency should be taken into consideration in implementing collaborative learning of writing skills. Therefore, future research studies may need to recruit learners at different proficiency (prior knowledge) levels to investigate possible interactions between levels of learner expertise in the area of English as a foreign language writing skills and the effectiveness of individual versus collaborative learning conditions. Second, this study examined the effectiveness of learning approaches (individual or collaborative) by primarily assessing the quality of learning products (i.e., essay). Future studies need to consider and measure other possible contributing factors and performance indicators, such as interactions in the writing processes, the quality of jointly drafted essays, and learners’ perceptions. In addition, as a way to manifest how collaborative learning affects the development of collective memory, future research should record and analyze learners’ interactions during the collaborative learning phases. Furthermore, more research should be done to investigate how learners develop their writing skills in other genres (such as argumentative, informative, and descriptive ones) in individual and collaborative instructional conditions.

In conclusion, the results of the reported experimental study supported the hypothesis generated by cognitive load theory. Learning English as a foreign language writing skills through a process-genre approach in the collaborative instructional condition was more effective and efficient than in the individual instructional condition. Subjective ratings of the cognitive load supported the interpretation of results within a cognitive load framework. The findings have implications for the innovations of teaching approaches, the developments of course materials, and curriculum designs in the field of teaching foreign language writing skills.

Data Availability Statement

Ethics statement.

Ethical review and approval was not required for the study on human participants in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Author Contributions

DJ: conceptualization, methodology, resources, data curation, writing – original draft, and review and editing. SK: supervision and writing – review and editing. Both authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Subjective Rating of Cognitive Load

All of the following questions refer to the learning activity that you just finished. Please respond to each of the questions on the following scale (0 meaning not at all the case and 10 meaning completely the case).

• Atkinson D. (2003). L2 writing in the post-process era: introduction. J. Second Lang. Writ. 12 3–15. [ Google Scholar ]
• Baaijen V., Galbraith D. (2018). Discovery through writing: relationships with writing processes and text quality. Cogn. Instruc. 36 199–223. 10.1201/9781315152189-2 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Badger R., White G. (2000). A process genre approach to teaching writing . ELT J . 54 , 153–160. [ Google Scholar ]
• Berninger V., Fuller F., Whitaker D. (1996). A process model of writing development across the life span. Educ. Psychol. Rev. 8 193–218. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bizzell P. (1982). Cognition, convention and certainty: what we need to know about writing. Pre/Text 3 211–245. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bruning R., Horn C. (2010). Developing motivation to write. Educ. Psychol. 35 25–37. [ Google Scholar ]
• Chen W. (2019). An exploratory study on the role of L2 collaborative writing on learners’ subsequent individually composed texts. Asia Pacific Educ. Researcher 28 563–573. 10.1007/s40299-019-00455-3 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Cullen P., French A., Jakeman V. (2014). The Official Cambridge Guide to IELTS for Academic & General Training . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• DeLeeuw K., Mayer R. (2008). A comparison of three measures of cognitive load: evidence for separable measures of intrinsic, extraneous, and germane load. J. Educ. Psychol. 100 223–234. [ Google Scholar ]
• Deng L., Chen Q., Zhang Y. (2014). Developing Chinese EFL Learners’ Generic Competence: A Genre-Based and Process-Genre Approach. Berlin: Springer. [ Google Scholar ]
• Dillenbourg P. (1999). “ What do you mean by collaborative learning? ,” in Collaborative Learning: Cognitive and Computational Approaches , ed. Dillenbourg P. (Oxford: Elsevier; ), 1–19. [ Google Scholar ]
• Fernández Dobao A. (2012). Collaborative writing tasks in the L2 classroom: comparing group, pair, and individual work. J. Second Lang. Writ. 21 40–58. 10.1016/j.jslw.2011.12.002 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Flower L., Hayes J. (1981). A cognitive process theory of writing. College Composit. Commun. 32 365–387. 10.2307/356600 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Flowerdew J. (1993). An educational, or process, approach to the teaching of professional genres. ELT J. 47 305–316. [ Google Scholar ]
• Graham S., Sandmel K. (2011). The process writing approach: a meta-analysis. J. Educ. Res. 104 396–407. [ Google Scholar ]
• Granado-Peinado M., Mateos M., Martín E., Cuevas I. (2019). Teaching to write collaborative argumentative syntheses in higher education. Read. Writ. 32 2037–2058. [ Google Scholar ]
• Herner L., Higgins K., Pierce T., Miller S. (2002). Study groups for active learning opportunities in preservice education. Professional Educator 25 29–40. [ Google Scholar ]
• Howell E., Hunt-Barron S., Kaminski R., Sanders R. (2018). Teaching argumentative writing to teachers and students: effects of professional development . Prof. Dev. Educ. 44 , 169–189. [ Google Scholar ]
• Hsu H., Lo Y. (2018). Using wiki-mediated collaboration to foster L2 writing performance. Lang. Learn. Technol. 22 103–123. [ Google Scholar ]
• Huang Y., Zhang L. (2020). Does a process-genre approach help improve students’ argumentative writing in English as a foreign language? findings from an intervention study. Read. Writ. Q. 36 339–364. [ Google Scholar ]
• Hyland K. (2003a). Second Language Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Hyland K. (2003b). Genre-based pedagogies: a social response to process. J. Second Lang. Writ. 12 17–29. [ Google Scholar ]
• Hyland K. (2008). Genre and academic writing in the disciplines . Lang. Teach. 41 , 543–562. [ Google Scholar ]
• Janssen J., Kirschner F., Erkens G., Kirschner P. A., Paas F. (2010). Making the black box of collaborative learning transparent: combining processoriented and cognitive load approaches . Educ. Psychol. Rev. 22 , 139–154. [ Google Scholar ]
• Jiang D., Kalyuga S. (2020). Confirmatory factor analysis of cognitive load ratings supports a two-factor model. Quant. Methods Psychol. 16 216–225. [ Google Scholar ]
• Jiang L., Yu S., Zhou N., Xu Y. (2021). English writing instruction in Chinese students’ experience: a survey study. RELC J. 10.1177/0033688220980227 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Jones S. (2014). From ideas in the head to words on the page: young adolescents’ reflections on their own writing processes. Lang. Educ. 28 52–67. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kalyuga S. (2007). Expertise reversal effect and its implications for learner-tailored instruction. Educ. Psychol. Rev. 19 509–539. 10.1007/s10648-007-9054-3 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kalyuga S. (2009). Cognitive Load Factors in Instructional Design for Advanced Learners. New York, NY: Nova Science Publishers, Inc. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kalyuga S., Ayres P., Chandler P., Sweller J. (2003). The expertise reversal effect. Educ. Psychol. 38 23–31. 10.1207/S15326985EP3801_4 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Karnes M., Collins D., Maheady L., Harper G., Mallette B. (1997). Using cooperative learning strategies to improve literacy skills in social studies. Read. Writ. Q. 13 37–51. [ Google Scholar ]
• Keen J. (2020). Writing revision: evidence for learning. Changing English 27 121–136. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kellogg R. (2008). Training writing skills: a cognitivedevelopmental perspective. J. Writ. Res. 1 1–26. 10.17239/jowr-2008.01.01.1 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kirkland M., Saunders M. (1991). Maximizing student performance in summary writing: managing cognitive load. TESOL Q. 25 105–121. 10.2307/3587030 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kirschner F., Paas F., Kirschner P. (2009). Individual and group-based learning from complex cognitive tasks: effects on retention and transfer efficiency. Comput. Hum. Behav. 25 306–314. 10.1016/j.chb.2008.12.008 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kirschner F., Paas F., Kirschner P. (2011). Task complexity as a driver for collaborative learning efficiency: the collective working-memory effect. Appl. Cogn. Psychol. 25 615–624. 10.1002/acp.1730 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kirschner P., Sweller J., Kirschner F., Zambrano J. (2018). From cognitive load theory to collaborative cognitive load theory. Int. J. Comput. Support. Collab. Learn. 13 213–233. 10.1007/s11412-018-9277-y [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Klein P., Ehrhardt J. (2015). The effects of discussion and persuasion writing goals on reasoning, cognitive load, and learning. Alberta J. Educ. Res. 61 40–64. [ Google Scholar ]
• Klein P., Leacock T. (2011). “ Distributed cognition as a framework for understanding writing ,” in Past, Present, and Future Contributions of Cognitive Writing Research to Cognitive Psychology , ed. Berninger V. (New York, NY: Psychology Press; ), 133–153. [ Google Scholar ]
• Leppink J., Paas F., van der Vleuten C., van Gog T., van Merriënboer J. (2013). Development of an instrument for measuring different types of cognitive load. Behav. Res. 45 1058–1072. 10.3758/s13428-013-0334-1 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Matos F. (2021). Collaborative writing as a bridge from peer discourse to individual argumentative writing. Read. Writ. 34 1321–1342. [ Google Scholar ]
• McDonough K. (2004). Learner-learner interaction during pair and small group activities in a Thai EFL context. System 32 207–224. 10.1016/j.system.2004.01.003 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• McDonough K., De Vleeschauwer J. (2019). Comparing the effect of collaborative and individual prewriting on EFL learners’ writing development. J. Second Lang. Writ. 44 123–130. 10.1016/j.jslw.2019.04.003 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• McDonough K., De Vleeschauwer J., Crawford W. (2018). Comparing the quality of collaborative writing, collaborative prewriting, and individual texts in a Thai EFL context. System 74 109–120. 10.1016/j.system.2018.02.010 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Muncie J. (2009). Finding a place for grammar in EFL composition classes. ELT J. 56 180–186. [ Google Scholar ]
• Negari G. (2011). A study on strategy instruction and EFL learners’ writing skill . Int. J. Engl. Linguist. 1 , 299–307. [ Google Scholar ]
• Paas F. (1992). Training strategies for attaining transfer of problem-solving skill in statistics: a cognitive-load approach . J. Educ. Psychol. 84 , 429–434. [ Google Scholar ]
• Paas F., van Merriënboer J. (1993). The efficiency of instructional conditions: an approach to combine mental-effort and performance measures. Hum. Factors 35 737–743. 10.1177/001872089303500412 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Paas F., Tuovinen J., Tabbers H., van Gerven P. (2003). Cognitive load measurement as a means to advance cognitive load theory. Educ. Psychol. 38 63–71. 10.1186/s12909-015-0452-9 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Prince M. (2004). Does active learning work? A review of the research. J. Eng. Educ. 93 223–231. 10.1002/j.2168-9830.2004.tb00809.x [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Proske A., Kapp F. (2013). Fostering topic knowledge: essential for academic writing . Read. Writ . 26 , 1337–1352. [ Google Scholar ]
• Racelis J., Matsuda P. (2013). Integrating process and genre into the second language writing classroom: research into practice. Lang. Teach. 46 382–393. [ Google Scholar ]
• Rahimi M., Zhang L. (2021). Effects of an engaging process-genre approach on student engagement and writing achievements. Read. Writ. Q. 10.1080/10573569.2021.1982431 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Raimes A. (1991). Out of the woods: emerging traditions in the teaching of writing. TESOL Q. 25 407–430. [ Google Scholar ]
• Raimes A. (1992). Exploring Through Writing: A Process Approach to ESL Composition. London: St. Martin’s Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Retnowati E., Ayres P., Sweller J. (2018). Collaborative learning effects when students have complete or incomplete knowledge. Appl. Cogn. Psychol. 32 681–692. 10.1037/1082-989x.2.1.64 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Shehadeh A. (2011). Effects and student perceptions of collaborative writing in L2. J. Second Lang. Writ. 20 286–305. 10.1016/j.jslw.2011.05.010 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Storch N. (2005). Collaborative writing: product, process, and students’ reflections. J. Second Lang. Writ. 14 153–173. 10.1016/j.jslw.2005.05.002 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Storch N. (2011). Collaborative writing in L2 contexts: processes, outcomes, and future directions. Annu. Rev. Appl. Linguist. 31 275–288. 10.1017/S0267190511000079 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Strobl C. (2014). Affordances of web 2.0 technologies for collaborative advanced writing in a foreign language. CALICO J. 31 1–18. 10.11139/cj.31.1.1-18 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sweller J. (2010). Element interactivity and intrinsic, extraneous, and germane cognitive load. Educ. Psychol. Rev. 22 123–138. 10.1007/s10648-010-9128-5 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sweller J., Ayres P., Kalyuga S. (2011). Cognitive Load Theory. London: Springer. [ Google Scholar ]
• Teng F. (2020). Young learners’ reading and writing performance: exploring collaborative modeling of text structure as an additional component of self-regulated strategy development. Stud. Educ. Eval. 65 : 100870 . [ Google Scholar ]
• Tribble C. (1996). Writing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Van Merriënboer J., Sweller J. (2005). Cognitive load theory and complex learning: recent development and future directions. Educ. Psychol. Rev. 17 147–177. 10.2307/23363899 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Vanderberg R., Swanson H. (2007). Which components of working memory are important in the writing process? Read. Writ. 20 721–752. 10.1007/s11145-006-9046-6 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Villarreal I., Gil-Sarratea N. (2019). The effect of collaborative writing in an EFL secondary setting. Lang. Teach. Res. 24 , 1–24. 10.1177/1362168819829017 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Wette R. (2017). Using mind maps to reveal and develop genre knowledge in a graduate writing course. J. Second Lang. Writ. 38 58–71. 10.1016/j.jslw.2017.09.005 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Zhang L., Ayres P., Chan K. (2011). Examining different types of collaborative learning in a complex computer-based environment: a cognitive load approach . Comput. Hum. Behav. 27 , 94–98. [ Google Scholar ]

You are using an outdated browser. Please upgrade your browser or activate Google Chrome Frame to improve your experience.

33 Interesting Writing Prompts for Language Learners (of All Levels)

When your language teachers and tutors advise you to get more writing practice , it can be hard to follow their guidance.

If your daily life isn’t action-packed, keeping a diary in your target language can get boring and repetitive, but what other topics can you discuss?

Whether you’re a beginner or an advanced learner, there are plenty of great things to write about. Here are 33 writing prompts for language learners to get you started.

Beginner Writing Prompts

1. who are you, 2. what are your favorite hobbies, 3. what’s your family like, 4. what’s your best friend like, 5. where do you live, 6. what’s your favorite food, 7. what’s your favorite season, 8. what’s your favorite movie or tv show, 9. describe your daily routine., 10. what are you going to do this weekend, 11. what’s your favorite animal, intermediate writing prompts, 12. what’s the funniest thing that has ever happened to you, 13. where would you like to go on vacation, 14. what’s the best vacation, trip or outing you’ve ever had, 15. where do you see yourself in five years, 16. what are your goals for the future, 17. what were you like as a child, 18. write a poem (rhyming or not) about something that inspires you., 19. pretend you’re instructing someone on how to do your favorite activity., 20. what’s your favorite (or your family’s favorite) tradition.

• 21. What do you think the world will be like in 50 years? 

22. Why is education important?

Advanced writing prompts, 23. if you were given three wishes, what would you wish for, 24. what do you think the most significant world problem is, 25. if you could change one thing about society, what would you change, 26. how has the internet affected communication how do you see it affecting communication in the future, 27. what do you think would be an ideal political system does an ideal system exist, 28. who’s responsible for poverty why does it exist, and how could it be resolved, 29. what’s your favorite literary work, and what has it taught you, 30. if you could teach your future children or other children of the future one lesson, what would it be, 31. what medical issues have you or your loved ones faced how did you handle them or how do you continue to handle them, 32. what topics are not adequately addressed in schools today why should these topics be addressed more, 33. describe a recent world event. what are the potential consequences of this event, why use foreign language writing prompts, how to get the most out of writing prompts for language learners.

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

Beginning level students usually know basic vocabulary related to describing people, weather, food, animals, routines and related topics.

Writing as a beginning student can be a bit tricky because you don’t yet have a vast vocabulary. Additionally, your verb conjugation abilities are probably limited, so you may need to stick to the present tense.

These writing prompts can be answered with simple, general vocabulary and present tense verbs , so they’re ideal for beginning students.

You can take this question in a wide variety of directions. Based on what vocabulary you want to practice, you might describe your appearance, your job and/or your interests. If you want to try using more advanced-level vocabulary, you could try getting more philosophical with your response.

Everyone has something they like to do. What are your favorite hobbies? If your vocabulary is limited, you might try simple responses, like “I like sports.” However, as your vocabulary gets more advanced, you can add more detail into your response. For instance, “I like sports, especially soccer. My favorite thing about soccer is hitting the ball with my head.”

What do they look like? What are their personalities like? How is each person related to you? What are their interests? This prompt can be used for quick, easy writing practice or for a book-length extended project.

You can describe your friend physically, describe their personality and/or explain what you like to do together. If you already know some past tense verbs, you might even tell a story about something that happened with your friend in the past to illustrate what your friend is like.

You could even break this one down into a series of prompts. Describe your neighborhood. Describe your city. Describe your state. Describe your country. You might discuss the layout, culture, businesses, natural environment or how you feel about your location.

Not only can you name the dish and list the ingredients, you can also describe how it tastes. As your language skills progress, you might even try explaining how the dish is made.

With this prompt, you can address a variety of subtopics. What is the weather like? What does the season look like? How does it feel? What events or holidays happen during the season?

You can describe what happens in the movie or TV show in either past or present tense. You might also note the genre and/or describe the characters.

Major bonus points if you can describe a Netflix movie or TV show  that you also watch in your target language!

Beginning students commonly learn words related to daily routines, so go through your day and explain what you do. When do you wake up? How do you get ready for work or school? What do you eat for breakfast? When do you leave for work or school? How do you get there? What do you do once you’re there? What do you eat for lunch? When do you leave? What do you eat for dinner? How do you relax in the evening?

This question can be a little more advanced in that you could use future tense verbs. However, if you don’t yet know future tense, depending on what your target language is, you may be able to simply use “I am going to…” constructions. Writing about your plans can help you practice words for common activities and prepare you for real conversations you may have with native speakers.

You might describe the animal, what it looks like, what it eats, where it lives, etc. This can give you practice with animal words, physical descriptions, food words and location-related vocabulary.

As an intermediate writer, it’s time to up your game. Now, you can use a broader range of vocabulary words and verb tenses. These prompts will help you make good use of your advancing skills.

Whip out your past tense verbs for this one! Consider writing the story of the funniest thing you’ve experienced. Maybe it’s something that happened to you or maybe it’s just something you witnessed. Regardless, this will give you practice with more diverse vocabulary and past tense verbs.

This prompt invites you to give your conditional verb tenses a workout. Where would you like to go? Why would you like to visit this location? What would you like to do there? Who would you go with?

Describing the best out-of-the-ordinary experience you’ve had, whether a vacation or any other break from daily routine, gives you an opportunity to use plenty of past tense verbs. You might even work in some less common verbs to describe specific activities you participated in, like snorkeling or skiing. You can describe the experience, who you were with, what you did and what made it so enjoyable. Feeling nostalgic? Look at old photos if you have them and describe them in your target language.

Oh, the age-old interview question! In your native language, it’s probably an uncomfortable opportunity to reflect on your goals, but in your target language, it can be a valuable way to practice using future, conditional and/or subjunctive verb tenses while also employing industry-specific vocabulary.

Plus, if you ever need to do a job interview in your target language, you’ll be happy you have the practice. If you like this prompt, you might even consider using some of  The Muse’s list of common interview questions  for additional writing prompts.

What do you hope to achieve in your life? You might use future tense here, but if you prefer present tense, you can use an “I want to…” or related construction. From there, you can use all sorts of vocabulary words related to your career, family, housing, etc.

Use past tense to describe yourself as a child. You might describe your appearance or personality. To work in more advanced vocabulary, you might also note in what ways you challenged your parents and what you wanted to be when you grew up.

Writing poetry can be a fun way to use your language skills. To make it a little trickier, write in rhyme. You can write about whatever you like, but you can’t go wrong with a love poem. After all, you can always re-purpose it down the road if need be.

Whether it’s cooking, painting or playing Fortnite, this will require the use of commands and a strong vocabulary related to whatever activity you write about.

Whether they’re monthly or yearly, passed down through generations or made up on the spot, traditions shared by people can be a lot of fun. But they also afford a lot of opportunities to use whatever verb conjugations you need to practice. You can talk about your favorite tradition from the past, how you practice it today or how you hope to practice it in the future. You could even instruct readers on how to adopt your favorite tradition.

21. What do you think the world will be like in 50 years?  

Think about society, culture and major world issues. How do you think everything will change and evolve? Not only can you use future tense verbs, but this prompt will give you the opportunity to use more advanced vocabulary related to science, technology, culture and/or politics. Depending on your vision, you could even expand your work into a sci-fi or dystopian novel.

This prompt could work with either present tense or conditional verbs. However, more importantly, it invites you to use plenty of more advanced vocabulary relating to learning, careers and society. Responding to this prompt could even serve as extra motivation by reminding you why education or learning of any kind (including your language learning) is so important to you.

As an advanced student, you should be aiming to write without having to think too much. You should be able to navigate seamlessly between any verb tenses and use your large and diverse vocabulary effectively. These prompts aim to help you exercise a broad array of skills.

Okay, you might not have a genie in a bottle, but what would you ask for if you did? This question invites the use of conditional tense verbs. Plus, the vocabulary you use is likely to be as diverse and varied as your dreams.

Writing about current world problems can help you use vocabulary words that are relevant today but might not be terribly common. While you could use present tense, you might also use future and/or conditional tense to examine how this issue could cause long-term consequences.

Take this world’s problems and turn them around! Considering what you would change about society will give you an opportunity to use conditional tense and/or commands to explain what needs to change and how.

Past and future tense in one prompt? How can you resist? Not only that, this prompt invites you to use the latest technology-related words, which are super useful for advanced learners.

This prompt invites you to use advanced vocabulary related to politics and society. Plus, you can use it to practice the conditional tense, future tense and/or subjunctive tense verbs.

This question may feel nearly impossible to answer in your native language, so it will be even more challenging in your target language. However, if you give it a try, you’ll be able to practice words related to society and politics. While you’ll probably use mostly present tense verbs, you might also work in some conditional, subjunctive, future and/or past tense.

Using key literary terms is often reserved for academia, so writing about your favorite literary work will certainly give your vocabulary a workout. While this will be largely in present tense, you might throw in a few other verb tenses for good measure.

What’s the best lesson you’ve learned? Why do you want others to learn it? This question is complex enough that you might incorporate a huge array of verb tenses.

Medical terminology can be a little tricky, but practicing using it is useful , particularly if it relates to a medical condition you or loved ones have. Writing about medical issues and their treatments will reinforce medical vocabulary and past tense verbs. Plus, if you ever experience a medical emergency abroad, you might be relieved to have practiced relevant vocabulary.

You’re educated. You know what’s up. What do you think should be covered more in schools? Addressing this issue gives you an opportunity to use education terms, present tense verbs and conditional verbs.

Not only can you use vocabulary that’s currently relevant, you can also use an array of verb tenses. Start with past tense and then transition to future, conditional and/or subjunctive tenses. Using this writing prompt can help you practice transitioning smoothly between tenses.

• Using foreign language writing prompts can help reduce anxiety when writing in your target language . Staring at a blank page can be stressful and can make you want to procrastinate trying to write, but writing prompts can make writing seem less like hard work.
• You can also use foreign language writing prompts to determine what vocabulary and/or grammar you need to work on . Writing can help you detect what grammar rules you’re struggling with and what holes in your vocabulary you need to fill.
• Writing prompts can help you keep your target language in shape . Skills can slip over time, so continuing to practice your writing can help prevent backsliding.
• Using writing prompts can help make it so that writing in your target language feels easy and requires less conscious effort .  Writing in a foreign language is a skill like any other. The more you practice it, the easier it will become.
• Don’t just write. Read. To write well in your target language, you’ll need to also read in your target language. Luckily, there are plenty of places to read content in your target language .  Project Gutenberg  offers many classic works in several languages, and  BBC News  gives you news stories in a variety of languages.
• Write as often as possible. Writing as often as possible not only gives you the practice you need to improve your skills, it also keeps you in the habit. If you set aside a few minutes each day for your writing practice, you’re less likely to forget to do it.
• Try to use specific rules or vocabulary you’ve recently learned. Trying to use specific grammar rules and vocabulary you’ve recently learned is a terrific way to practice using your new skills. It reinforces them and makes them easier to use the next time.
• As you write, note what you’re struggling with. While you’re writing, you’ll probably notice a few hiccups. For instance, you may want a word but realize you don’t know it. Whenever you encounter one of these problems, jot it down. Then, after you write, you can go over your notes to work to resolve whatever issues you struggled with.
• Read what you’ve written and correct your own work. Once you’ve responded to a writing prompt, read over your work with a critical eye. What errors do you notice? How could you improve your writing? Going over your work gives you an opportunity to spot some errors you didn’t notice as you wrote.
• Consider having a native speaker correct your work. You might ask a friend or a tutor to read over your writing and tell you what they think. You could also consider finding a tutor through italki. Even finding someone to do a one-time check of your writing on occasion can be a huge help.

With these writing prompts for all levels, you’ll never be at a loss for words.

And, if you need more inspiration to help you fill out the above writing prompts, you could try a language learning platform such as FluentU  which can help you with both conversational skills and written communication.

Enter your e-mail address to get your free PDF!

We hate SPAM and promise to keep your email address safe

• Phone: +91 8466016171
• Whatsapp: +91 8208375580
• Email: contact@leapscholar.com

Foreign Language IELTS Essay: IELTS Writing Task 2 Essay Samples

• Updated On December 14, 2023
• Published In IELTS Preparation 💻

Writing Task 2 of the IELTS exam has displayed a large variety of questions over the years. However, there are still some general themes and topics that are often repeated in Task 2 of this English proficiency test. One of these recurring themes is the new language or the foreign language theme.

Table of Contents

In this theme, you can be asked to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of learning a different language belonging to any of the foreign countries. Additionally, you can also be asked to express your own opinion on the topic. This blog shares detailed information about Foreign Language IELTS Essay. Before we get deeper into the topic and start discussing model answers, let’s walk through some general tips that can help you in leaving a good impression on the examiner about your English language skills in task 2.

Tips to Ace the Foreign Language Essay Writing Task 2 IELTS

Although you can find an endless number of relevant examples for the essay writing task in IELTS, there really is no fixed format that can guarantee you a good band score in the writing section. So, what really works in helping you get a good score in task 2?

• A strong introduction and conclusion that are in coherence with the topic assigned: This will immediately get your examiner hooked onto the paragraphs written inside your piece and will leave a great impression on them!
• Use of refined vocabulary along with excellent use of grammar: Making use of good (and sometimes complex) vocabulary accompanied by an accurate usage of the English grammar is a pre-requisite for getting a good score in writing. It shows the examiner that your own knowledge of the language is vast.
• Providing relevant examples from different parts of the world: Many aspirants miss out on supporting their arguments along with good examples from either their own country or a different country. This leads to them losing out on marks in task 2.

Following these three tips will really catapult your writing task 2 score, which will have a greater impact on your overall band score for the writing section. To make the application of these tips more clear, let’s take a look at some of the sample answers for the foreign language theme.

Crack IELTS Exam in first attempt

Attend Leap’s free masterclass to get tips, tricks and advance strategies to crack IELTS exam in first attempt

Foreign Language IELTS Essay Samples

Question – Some people believe that the only reason for learning a new/foreign language is for travelling or working in a foreign land. While others argue that there are many more reasons as why someone should learn a new language apart from their native language. You have to discuss both these arguments and give your own opinion on the following topic. Make sure to give reasons for your answers and provide examples. Minimum word limit – 250 words

Sample Answer 1

Learning a second language or a foreign language is linked to many advantages that far surpass the sole reasons of learning a new language for travelling or working in a foreign land. However, for the sake of playing the devil’s advocate, I’ll say that some people belonging to a different school of thought consider better job opportunities and travelling to be the only motive behind learning a foreign language. I am of the opinion that there are other reasons like learning about a foreign culture, and the bright prospect of cognitive development that propel many monolingual people to study a new language. With ever-increasing globalization and the opening up of international barriers, more and more people choose to emigrate to new and foreign lands in the hope of better job prospects. This often requires them to learn a new tongue. For instance, many people prefer learning languages like English, Spanish, and French, rather than the Russian language because countries speaking the former tongues have shown more affinity towards emigrants and provide a multitude of better job opportunities. This makes many people believe that jobs and sometimes travel are the only driving forces for learning a new tongue, especially for a young learner. On the other hand, some people including myself have researched the pros and cons of learning a foreign language thoroughly and have found that the pros far outweigh the drawbacks. The onset of memory ailments like dementia can be slowed down by cognitive development that comes with learning a foreign language. Furthermore, multilingual people are more confident and can easily acclimate themselves to new and alien surroundings by the virtue of their communication skills that have been expanded and upscaled. They find it easy to overcome language barriers and truly become global citizens speaking the global language. In conclusion, to go through the tough process of honing effective communication skills in a third language or a second language, people realise that it is not just for the sake of travel or work that they are doing this process. Instead, it stems from a deeper love for the language and the confidence that speaking a new tongue instills in them. Question – When living in a foreign country where you have to speak a new language, you can face serious social and practical problems. To what extent do you agree or disagree? Give reasons and examples in your answer and write at least 250 words.

Also Read: SAT Writing & Language Test 2022

Sample Answer 2

Language barriers arguably form the backbone of the biggest social and practical problems that people living in a foreign land have to face and overcome often. In my personal opinion, it can also spark serious problems in various countries, however, the widespread use of technology in curbing these issues to a certain extent over the past few decades. People belonging to different cultures can have issues in understanding each other because of speaking different languages and sometimes even because of different ways of pronunciation of the same words. Migration is not on the rise in the twenty-first century and people often move to distant lands in hopes of jobs, travel, and sometimes studying. In such a scenario not speaking the land’s language can become a basis for social problems like discrimination, racism, etc. Interestingly enough, technology has played a pivotal role in curbing the extent of practical problems faced by people when moving to a new land without being savvy with the foreign language. For instance, there are many web-based applications that do the translation job for people and save them the trouble of having to explain their point to the natives merely through vague hand gestures.

By way of conclusion, I stand firm on the point that social problems can far exceed practical problems when migrating to a foreign land without being fluent in the foreign language and perhaps, some language learning could really help in becoming a part of the foreign culture quicker and better. Although, as far as practical problems are concerned, technology is a boon that is eliminating most of them.

Related Articles: 

• Top 9 IELTS Listening Tips & Strategies To Improve Your IELTS Score
• IELTS 2022 Task 2 Advantages & Disadvantages Essay
• COVID- 19 IELTS Writing Task 2

Frequently Asked Questions

1. how do i practice the ielts writing at home.

Ans: The best way to  practice  writing for IELTS is by looking at sample answers and practising as many themes as you can. You can also show this to a tutor or an online learning platform’s mentors like the ones at  Leap Scholar  to ensure that you are on the right path.

2. What is the ideal format for IELTS writing task 2?

Ans: There is no single ideal format for writing. As you practice you will notice that for different themes, you can have many different formats. You should use the one you’re most confident with in the exam.

3. Is IELTS writing formal or informal?

Ans: IELTS writing should be formal.

Know more about IELTS

Get free speaking practice samples.

• Describe a Skill That you can teach other people
• Describe a Place you Visited Where the Air was Polluted
• Describe a Famous Person that you are Interested in
• Describe a Course That You Want to Learn
• Describe a Person who Solved a Problem in Smart Way
• Describe a Prize That You Received
• Describe a Volunteering Experience You Have Had
• Describe a Piece of Good News
• Describe Something you Taught to Your Friend
• Talk About an Interesting Old Person you Met Recently
• Describe a Dinner you Really Enjoyed
• Describe a Story or Novel That Was Interesting to You
• Describe a Time When you Shared Something with Others
• Describe a Toy you Liked in Childhood
• Describe an Interesting Neighbour
• Describe a Competition You Would Like to Take Part In
• Describe an interesting activity that you remember enjoying most in your Primary School
• Describe Your Childhood Friend
• Describe an Object You Find Particularly Beautiful
• Describe a Place Where you are Able to Relax
• Describe a person you know who likes to talk a lot
• Describe a place where you would like to go to relax
• Describe a period when you were busy
• Describe a long-term goal you would like to achieve
• Describe a situation when you helped someone
• Describe a job you would not like to do in the future
• Describe a time when you used a map
• Describe a skill that you learned in your childhood
• Describe an unusual holiday you had
• Describe an exciting activity that you experienced with someone else
• Describe a person who is good at making people feel welcome in his/her home
• Describe A Time You Successfully Did Something Difficult
• Describe Something in Your Country That You Are Interested In
• Describe a Beautiful City
• Describe something you do regularly that helps you work and study better
• Describe a photo that you took and are proud of
• Describe a party that you enjoyed
• Describe a useful object in your home that you can’t live without
• Describe a good advertisement that you think is useful
• Describe an occasion when someone or something made noise
• Describe a sportsperson that you admire
• Describe something that you picked up that was thrown by someone else
• Describe a time that something changed your life in good ways
• Describe a successful person who you once studied or worked with

Get Free Reading Practice Samples

• William henry perkin reading answers
• Why zoos are good reading answers
• Bioluminescence reading answers
• Classifying societies reading answers
• Artificial artists reading answers
• Jargon reading answers
• The Origins of Laughter Reading Answers
• The Innovation of Grocery Stores Reading Answers
• All About the Otter Reading Answers
• The Triune Brain Reading Answers
• Saving the Soil Reading Answers
• Trans Fatty Acids Reading Answers
• A Disaster of Titanic Proportions Reading Answers
• Why Companies Should Welcome Disorder Reading Answers
• Book Review Reading Answers
• Tea Times Reading Answers
• Why are Finland's Schools Successful Reading Answers
• Intelligence and Giftedness Reading Answers
• Animal Minds Parrot Alex Reading Answers
• Crop Growing Skyscrapers Reading Answers
• Secrets of the Swarm Reading Answers
• Walking with Dinosaurs Reading Answers
• The Development of Travel Under the Ocean Reading Answers
• What's so Funny Reading Answers
• The Culture of Chimpanzee Reading Answers
• Clutter Bugs Beware Reading Answer
• Stepwells Reading Answers
• Glaciers Reading Answers

Get Free Writing Practice Samples

• Advantages and Disadvantages Essay with Sample Answers
• Agree and Disagree Essay with Sample Answers
• Problem Solution Essay Topic with Sample Answers
• Every year several languages die out
• Positive or Negative Development Essay with Sample Answers
• Honesty is the best policy essay
• Online shopping essay
• Environment essay topics
• Prevention is better than cure essay

Get Free Listening Practice Samples

• Family excursions listening answers
• Public library listening answers
• Hiring a public room listening answers
• Notes on social programme listening answers
• Accommodation request form listening answers
• Transport survey listening answers
• Mic house agency repairs listening answers
• Holiday rentals listening answer
• Job enquiry listening answers
• Homestay application listening answers
• Library information listening answers
• Free activities in the burnham area listening answers

IELTS Important Information

• IELTS Exam Date
• IELTS Exam Fee
• IELTS Modules
• IELTS Speaking Practice Test
• IELTS Writing Practice Test
• IELTS Reading Practice Test
• IELTS Listening Practice Test
• IELTS Test Centres
• IELTS Results
• Types of IELTS
• IELTS Pattern
• IELTS Exam Eligibilty
• IELTS Slot Booking
• IELTS Band Score
• IELTS Registration
• IELTS Books
• IELTS Preparation
• IELTS Practice Test
• IELTS Speaking Cue Card
• IELTS Speaking Part 1
• IELTS Writing Task 1
• IELTS Writing Task 2
• Task 1 Pie Chart
• Task 1 Table Chart
• Task 1 Bar Graph
• Task 1 Line Graph
• Task 1 Diagram
• IELTS Computer Based Test
• IELTS Paper Based Test
• IELTS One Skill Retake
• IELTS for UKVI
• IELTS Vocabulary

IELTS Test Centre and Dates in India

• IELTS Test Centre and Dates in Hyderabad
• IELTS Test Centre and Dates in Bangalore
• IELTS Test Centre and Dates in Chennai
• IELTS Test Centre and Dates in Amritsar
• IELTS Centre and Dates in Ludhiana
• IELTS Test Centre and Dates in Mumbai
• IELTS Test Centres and Dates in Ahmedabad
• IELTS Centre and Dates in Delhi
• IELTS Test Centres and Dates in Chandigarh
• IELTS Center and Dates in Pune

Manisha Angre

Experienced IELTS prep trainer and education management industry veteran. Specializes in public speaking, international education, market research, mentoring, and management.

Related Posts

A Guide on Most Common English Words Used in Daily Life

Top IELTS Tips and Tricks For Best IELTS Scores 2024

60+ IELTS Essay Topics 2024: IELTS Writing Task 2 Samples & Tips

Trending now.