Learning to write opinion texts in Primary students: analysis of metalinguistic activity, concepts about writing and final products

Abstract

This paper analyzes the metalinguistic capacity shown by students in the 4th year of primary education (9 years of age) in the process of a collaborative writing task, as well as the concepts that these students have developed about writing. It also shows what elements of the didactic intervention are present in the process followed by the different couples and in the texts that these children produce. The results allow us to appreciate in detail the metalinguistic and abstraction capacity of these students and the nature of their reasoning, while showing their conceptions about writing, their vision of the strategies proposed by the intervention and the reflection of the process in written products. They allow us to understand, from the triangulation of the different data obtained, the itinerary followed by each pair of students, their ideas and the obstacles encountered, and thus propose lines of action for teachers. Finally, the design of the research and the analyzed data also give us the opportunity to contrast the learning between students who have followed a didactic intervention with explicit reflection on grammar with others who have not followed it.