The process of pre-planning in collaborative writing at the primary level

Abstract

This paper, of descriptive and qualitative nature, studies the operations and sub-processes of textual planning performed by primary students as well as the techniques they use when writing their drafts. To this end, we analyze the episodes found in the oral interactions of 11 pairs of 5th graders and the drafts they produced in the context of a joint expository-argumentative writing task. Results show that, in general, students focus on the sub-process of the generation of ideas, and, to a lesser extent, on metalinguistic, esthetic and task management aspects. Regarding the techniques, we observe that only six pairs use them and that they represent different levels of complexity. These results, together with the high variability found, evidence the need to practice this process specifically and systematically at this stage.