Convincing EFL students to practice writing: Assigning collaborative writing tasks as extra credit pop quizzes

Abstract

This paper reports the results of a replication experiment on the effectiveness of extra credit pop quizzes within the context of English for specific academic purposes course. In the original experiment, multiple-choice pop quizzes assigned as extra credit were found to be effective at increasing student attendance rates, classroom participation, the pass rate and student satisfaction, without undermining learning objectives or causing grade inflation. This replication sought to maintain these positive results, while mitigating the loss of instructional hours available for formative tasks. This was attempted by converting collaborative writing into unannounced extra credit assignments as substitutes for multiple-choice quizzes. In addition to maintaining the increased level of student effort, awarding extra credit for formative tasks was found to be a more efficient allocation of class time, resulting in a significant increase in student submission of collaborative writing assignments.

Keywords: Extra credit, ESAP, collaborative writing, continuous assessment, higher education.