L2 Journal: An electronic refereed journal for foreign and second language educators

Collaborative prewriting discussion (CPD) is one of the most popular activities in L2 writing classes. With the CPD task, students can discuss their writing plan with each other before they start to write. As a language teacher, however, I ask myself: does CPD always help? In fact, without providing instructions, EFL students typically talk about their ideas when they are asked to discuss, and they seldom provide feedback and discuss the organization of ideas on one another, which results in a meaningless discussion (Huang et al., 2021; Li et al., 2020; McDonough et al., 2018; Neumann & McDonough, 2015; Tatiana, 2021). Considering this important issue, I conducted a small project and I will share what I found from the two discussions and hope that these explorations will bring some valuable information about the CPD task to writing teachers teaching in similar EFL or ESL contexts.