How do Primary Students Plan and Review a Text? A Case Study of a Collaborative Writing Task

Abstract

Collaborative writing tasks constitute an adequate framework for the study of the cognitive processes of writing. This descriptive and qualitative study uses data from collaborative writing to learn about the way planning and revising processes are carried out by primary students. More specifically, it looks at when students carry out those processes and which typical operations within those processes they pay attention to. To this end, we recorded and analyzed the oral interactions of nine pairs of students writing fables collaboratively in Spanish L1. Results show that planning is basically devoted to generating ideas for the text and that this process mainly takes place during writing. As for revision, students review different writing aspects during textualization, but only two pairs carry out a final revision of the text, paying attention to spelling only. This research offers a diagnosis of primary students’ writing behavior in collaborative tasks. It also serves as an orientation for teaching and learning writing focusing less on the product and more on the students’ needs.