Elementary school students as authors of a description: stages in the learning of writing and linguistic-discursive styles / Alumnos de tercer y séptimo grado de nivel primario como autores de una descripción: etapas en el aprendizaje de la escritura y estilos lingüístico-discursivos

Abstract

This paper explores the variety and integration of linguistic resources used by third and seventh graders in elementary schools with different socio-educational characteristics in Northern Patagonia (Argentina), when composing a description about a familiar topic. Texts were analysed according to two steps: a category analysis was performed from a lexicogrammatical and morpho-orthographic approach (unit of analysis: the word), and then a correspondence analysis and a following ascendant hierarchical cluster analysis were applied. Five clusters revealed three stages of learning to write a descriptive text — initial literacy, confirmation, writing to learn — and five linguistic-discursive styles — enumerative, intimate, protagonist, historical-contextual, external observer. These patterns were interpreted in terms of different modes of appropriation and the use of writing, related to the specific characteristics of the written task and the particular socio-educational traits of each grade/school. Students favoured different perspectives, types of information and linguistic formulations in their texts, in a continuum between particularistic, context-dependent principles, and universalistic standard-oriented principles, whose characteristics were closer to the prototypical descriptive text.