An Investigation of the Cognitive and Social Processing of Pre-Writing Activities: A Qualitative Case Study of Three English as Foreign Language (EFL) Learners in a Facebook Group

This paper, as part of an ongoing study, reports a qualitative case study in investigating pre-writing activities among three English as Foreign language (EFL) learners in an online community via a facebook group. The data were collected from the learners’ interactional exchanges, observation notes of their interaction and responses to online written interview questions. Based on a qualitative analysis of the three sources of data, the findings showed that the EFL learners followed four major cognitive procedural steps: topic selection, idea generation, reflection on the ideas produced by them and outlining the persuasive essay. The cognitive strategies at the micro-level used by the learners are interpretative strategies which reflect their interpretation of the task and procedural strategies which were used to pursue the pre-writing activities. Based on the observation notes, the social processing of the learners’ interaction in the four steps tended to be more collaborative and interactive than individualistic. This made the pre-writing activities more interesting for the EFL learners. Such findings imply that Social Networks (SNSs) such as Facebook groups can be an interactive learning environment for EFL learners in pre-writing activities. Key-Words: Process Writing; Pre-Writing; Cognitive; Social; Social Networks