Writing hyperstories collaboratively for an authentic audience

Abstract

This qualitative case study explores and characterizes EFL second level students sense of audience when writing hyperstories in small groups at Minuto de Dios University. The question guiding the research was, how do students demonstrate awareness of audience when writing collaboratively hyperstories that others will then read? The participants were fifty-four students from two classes of second level of English. The data was then collected from ten groups chosen at random. Each group consisted of either two or three students. The data necessary for this research was gathered using three instruments: students artifacts, audiotape recordings and semi-structured interviews during a period of 13 sessions (each being two hours and fifteen minutes long).The data was analyzed using an a priori and grounded approach. The broad conclusions of this study are that participants were able to use some audience related activities while writing, students took into account their audience characteristics when writing their hyperstories in groups, publication of their stories provided a real sense of audience, and thus motivated students to produce a better quality of work, the digital writing environment allowed for a different and nuanced way in demonstrating audience awareness, collaborative writing appeared to increase audience awareness in students writing, students reported positive experiences in regards to the project, participants manifested that this experience helped to be more creative and improve their writing skills overall.