39 2 Collaborative Writing in a Tertiary Chinese as a Foreign Language Classroom: Processes and Products Brian Olovson and Sha Huang Introduction Collaborative work in pairs or groups is a common practice in lan- guage classrooms around the globe. Over the past twenty years, research- ers have become increasingly interested in the processes, products and learning outcomes of collaborative writing that involve jointly construct- ing a written text (Fernández Dobao, 2012, 2014; Malmqvist, 2005; Philp et al., 2014; Storch, 2013; Zhang & Plonsky, 2020). Collaboration in this context means that students work together in pairs or groups during all stages of the writing process to produce a single text. In addition, students share decision-making responsibility while writing and assume joint authorship of the co-produced text (Lunsford & Ede, 1991; Storch, 2013). This is different from cooperation, which is a defined as an intentional, premeditated division of labor among writers (Storch, 2013). Collaborative writing activities are a powerful tool in the repertoire of second language (L2) researchers and practitioners, because they afford students opportunities to compose better texts in their L2 (Fernández Dobao, 2012; Malmqvist, 2005; Olovson, 2018; Storch, 2005), to learn new vocabulary or grammar (Fernández Dobao & Blum, 2013; Kim, 2008), to consolidate linguistic knowledge (Swain & Lapkin, 1995, 1998), to improve ways of expressing ideas (Storch, 2005), to gain a greater understanding of writing conventions (Roskams, 1999) and to gain better control over the use of particular linguistic features (Shehadeh, 2011). Furthermore, Williams (2005) contends that collaborative writing can facilitate language acquisition in two ways. First, collaborative writing allows learners to modify their output toward the target forms they are 5453_Ch02.indd 39 5453_Ch02.indd 39 18-12-2022 21:44:37 18-12-2022 21:44:37