Developing Students as Writers Through Collaboration

Revision is recognised as a key and complex element of the writing process. Despite this, research shows that students find it difficult effectively to revise their own writing due to a lack of metacognitive awareness and understanding of the processes they undertake when writing. The first part of this inquiry studies nine students' understanding of the writing process and the revision strategies they employ using think-aloud protocols and follow-up interviews. Although the students all agreed that revision was an important part of improving their writing, they could not, or found it difficult to, articulate reasons for the changes they made to their writing. Therefore, the second part of the study explores the potential of collaborative writing to encourage and facilitate metacognitive talk through the implementation of a strategy where students are paired with a 'writing buddy'. Observations of classroom work and interview responses of students showed that the scheme was successful in providing students with an experience of writing which was social, flexible and holistic, where talk is used to externalise thinking in order to develop a metacognitive understanding of the writing process.