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Co-operative writing has long been a very common practice in learning English writing skills; however, not until recent years has collaborative writing, especially virtual collaborative writing, been on the rise as driven by online learning contexts and the increased availability of web-based collaborative tools. Apart from creating active and exploratory learning tasks, increasing social interaction, cultivating sense of responsibility and developing higher-level thinking skills, collaborative writing has proved its roles in maximizing the quality at mutual work and enhancing individual gains. However, the use of web-based collaborative writing also goes with several challenges that requires particular conditions to overcome. This paper is going to provide an insight into collaborative writing in compared with co-operative writing, and analyze in what ways web-based collaborative writing with communicating and commenting functions outweigh conventional cooperative format. Discussion on different factors to ensure the success of web-based collaborative writing tasks is then be presented in the final part of the paper with a hope to enhance the effectiveness of web-based collaborative tools in teaching and learning English writing skills.
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