Marta Milian Gubern

Contextual Factors Enhancing Cognitive and Metacognitive Activity During the Process of Collaborative Writing

Writing instruction faces the challenge of elaborating a theory of writing in school contexts through the observation and analysis of how cognitive benefits of written language are reached. Different perspectives on the concept “context”, considered in studies on written composition, are integrated in a model of context interaction that becomes the theoretical basis to the research. The relationship among four contexts within the collaborative composition process of an explanatory text are explored: the context of the writer, gathering the experience and knowledge on written language and written language use formerly acquired by the writer; the context of reception or social context of written language use; the context of the task, where the composition process develops; and the context of teaching and learning writing. Eleven-year-olds try to explain to eight-year-old readers the laws of light reflection through a kaleidoscope. Data analysis is carried out in a multiple case study in natural settings applied to verbal interactions among the participants in five collaborative writing groups. The parameters observed refer to: a) characteristics of the composition process, aiming to find out any general procedures in the processes followed by different groups; b) explicit references to readers, aiming to establish the influence of the context of reception; c) explicit utterances including references to the second person pronoun, to follow the presence of the different contexts involved in the process, d) reformulations of the text being written, known as “attempted text”, aiming to observe the writers’ consideration of the different contexts participating in the composition process. The results show the relevance of the context of reception in the writers’ representation of the task and of the text, and acknowledge the presence of multiple contexts dynamically interacting in the context of the task. The study concludes that group work enhances knowledge building on discursive situations, on language, and on writing composition strategies, and argues for the importance of designing instructional sequences that allow the negotiation of explicit learning goals and the monitoring and control of one’s own learning and writing process.

La lengua escrita en la escuela: el texto narrativo a los 8 años

espanolEn los ultimos anos, investigaciones sobre la lengua escrita desde la perspectiva de la psicolinguistica y del analisis del discurso senalan la importancia del desarrollo de la competencia textual en el marco escolar. Este articulo pretende contribuir al analisis del nivel de competencia en la produccion de textos narrativos entre los escolares de ocho anos. El analisis se concreta en: a) el grado de adquisicion de la estructura narrativa en la produccion escrita; b) el uso y distribucion de formas verbales en relacion al esquema narrativo; c) la incidencia de la lengua familiar y la lengua de la escuela como factor determinante de la competencia textual. EnglishIn the last decade, studies in the field of psycholinguistics and discourse analysis stress the importance of focussing on the development of textual competence at school. This article attempts to analyse the level of competence in writing narratives among eight year old children. The study focuses on: a) the level of acquisition of a narrative structure in a writing task; b) the use and distribution of verbal forms related to text structure in Catalan; c) the incidence of the home language and the school language as a determinant of textual competence in a bilingual context.