What happens when I write? Pupils’ writing about writing

Abstract

This article presents pupils’ awareness of writing as elicited through a metawriting task, in other words a task in which pupils from the third, fourth and sixth forms (grades) were required to write about writing. The analysis of the texts revealed the pupils’ increasing ability to write texts focusing on writing and on the subject’s relationship to writing. There are significant differences concerning the number of processes mobilised by the pupils to describe the writing process and the operations that take place within it. The increase in awareness is particularly salient in the case of planning during pre-writing. The pupils from the sixth form also mobilise a significantly higher number of processes concerned with the components of textualising (translating) and revising. The results for awareness of text and of reader do not present significant differences or any gradual increase. On the textual dimension, attention is given predominantly to the formal aspects of the texts, especially in the lower forms, while the emergence of other factors, such as genre, is still limited. As for the reader, this aspect of awareness receives the lowest number of associated processes when pupils write about their writing. The results revealed the dimensions and factors to which pupils in different school forms have conscious access when reflecting on their writing. The outcomes support the strategy of using metawriting as consciousness raising tool to increase pupils’ writing skills.