In-school writing practices with students of Spanish Literature: a description of the training of literate subjects

Abstract

This article describes some in-school writing practice activities carried out by undergraduate students of Spanish Literature in basic and middle school. The aim is to describe the most frequent writing practices during basic and middle education as well as the meaning given to them by students when they incorporate them into their learning process and become literate persons. The theoretical foundations of our work are those of the New Literacy Studies (NLE), as well as experiences from the Writing across the Curriculum (WAC) movement. Based on these approaches, we designed three analytic categories: school activities, feedback in writing, and the oralization of writing. These categories were used to design a questionnaire of 15 questions, including both dichotomous questions and open questions. Closed-ended questions allowed us to know the frequency of types of writing and specific scholar practices. Open-ended questions helped us to understand the significance given by the students to these practices. The questionnaire was applied to 67 students from first, eighth and ninth semester. The results show that the school carries out a variety of literacy practices and that it is moving from basic to full literacy. For the students, writing is a discursive practice which characterizes them as literate persons.