Data collection procedure

All the data included in this study were collected in the Fall semester of 2010. Data collection was carefully scheduled to take place after the past tense, and especially the contrast between the preterit and the imperfect, had been covered in the course. Data collection spanned a 2-week period of time and took place in a classroom on campus. Approximately two weeks before the first session, participants completed the language background questionnaire online from home via the website www.surveygizmo.com. This information was used to identify L2 and HL learners who met the background requirements for inclusion in this study, as described above. Participants were then contacted by the researcher and signed up for a group of sessions (e.g., group 1 met Tuesdays at 5:00pm, group 2 met Wednesdays at 4:00pm, and so on). Each student signed up for one of the groups based on their availability. A maximum of 12 students were allowed to sign up in each group, which the researcher subsequently divided into dyads (resulting in up to 6 dyads per group), as described below.

6 _{The original story was slightly shortened without compromising the plot by removing some of}

the pictures. The reason for shortening the story was to minimize participant fatigue, especially since learners had to write the story again as part of the immediate post-treatment task.

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At the beginning of the first session, participants were assigned a research ID number, which was used in place of their names on the written narratives and audio-recorded interactions, and they were given some general instructions, which included: (a) using Spanish as much as possible when interacting with each other, (b) expressing themselves verbally rather than with gestures given that their interactions were not video-recorded, and (c) writing legibly. The researcher then formed dyads based exclusively on the learners’ linguistic background: some L2 learners were paired with other L2 learners, and some L2 learners were paired with HL learners. Out of the 8 L2-L2 dyads, seven were matched-gender (6 female-female, 1 male-male), and only one was mixed-gender (male-female); out of the 8 L2-HL dyads, four were matched-gender (female-female), and four were mixed-gender (female-male). Learners were not paired based on their proficiency level, given that proficiency was not a variable manipulated in this study. To ensure the random assignment of students to dyads, the proficiency test was not even

administered until the final session, after all pair work had been completed. Familiarity with other participants was not a factor taken into consideration to form pairs either, although it is likely that some students knew each other, given that they were all enrolled in the same course, although they may not have been in the same small discussion sections.

Students were then informed that they would collaboratively plan, draft, and edit a story in Spanish based on pictures. During the entire process, learners were not allowed to use

dictionaries or consult with the researcher or other dyads. First, learners were provided with a copy of the wordless picture story A boy, a dog, a frog, and a friend, and they were instructed to work together to plan their narratives. During the planning phase, which lasted an average of 5 minutes, participants decided on the title and the characters’ names, and they went over the story orally. Once all the dyads had had a chance to go over the story together, they were provided

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with pens and paper, and they were instructed to write their narratives in the past. To control for scribe effects7, both members of each dyad were told to write, but the two drafts had to be identical, as specified in the instructions. Moreover, in order to encourage learners to engage in negotiation rather than copying from each other’s drafts, participants were specifically instructed not to look at their partner’s paper while writing the story. To keep time on task as consistent as possible across dyads, all learners were given a time limit of 20 minutes to write out their stories. After writing the story, they were asked to compare drafts to ensure they were identical, and they were also given specific guidelines to edit their drafts collaboratively. They were told to check their drafts for certain morphosyntactic, lexical, and orthographic errors that L2 and HL learners tend to make, such as subject-verb agreement, literal translations, and absence of accent marks, among others. The complete set of instructions on planning, drafting, and editing is included in Appendix B.

Once all revisions had been made, the researcher collected all the written narratives, provided learners with more paper, and instructed them to write the same story again, but

without assistance from their partners and without access to their first draft. Learners were asked to re-write their stories following their original plotline as closely as possible. The instructions for the individual writing tasks are also included in Appendix C. These “second drafts”

constituted the immediate posttest. The delayed posttest, which took place two weeks later, followed the same procedure as the immediate posttest: all participants were given copies of the story A boy, a dog, a frog, and a friend and were asked to write the story individually and without access to previously written drafts. Lastly, in that final session, participants took the MLA/DELE proficiency test online via the website www.surveygizmo.com, where it was

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Nixon (2007) found that the learners who assumed the role of the scribe within a dyad talked more than their partners, which could potentially affect the initiation and resolution of FFEs.

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automatically scored. As compensation for their participation in the study, students received 4 extra credit points on the final exam8.