Teaching of Writing and Development of Metalinguistic Competences

Abstract

The aim of this study is to show how metalinguistic skills and communicative competence of teenagers from first semester (out of six) are developed through a writing strategy based on paragraph structures. The study is based on the theoretical frames of Jakobson (1962) regarding a target language and a metalanguage; the teaching strategy is based on Serafini’s proposals (1996), who presents the teaching of writing, first as a process (prewriting, writing and revision); and second, that of writing itself, with eight types of paragraph structures (enumerative, concept development, sequencing, comparative, problem/solution, cause-effect, introduction and closing). The method used in the study is action research in the classroom. We show the case of a 15 year old student from high school, case in which a teaching strategy focuses on writing training in basic language structures: from the simple sentence, to paragraph, and then to the text structure. The case described presents a meta-linguistic competence regarding the monitoring of traditional grammar and textual grammar structures; the student writes paragraphs with cohesion and coherence, using differentiated intermediate punctuation; he uses connectors as a form of interfrastic cohesion, controlling and monitoring the length of about 20 words statements as a communicative way with little subordination; he shows awareness in managing his own discursive forms of the texts he writes, especially macrostructure: introduction, development and closing.