Writing as a Learning Tool: Design and Evaluation of a Didactic Sequence
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21747/21833958/red16a11Keywords:
Essay, Academic Literacy, Academic Writing, Second LanguageAbstract
The study highlights reading and writing to learn as a means of developing general skills that support students' integration into the academic discursive community. The study adopts the action research approach and explores how academic essays can support student learning. The methodological design included the conception, implementation, and evaluation of the learning mediation of the essay’s processes of planning, production and review as activities designed to support comprehension of curriculum content. The study was conducted in the subject Portuguese didactics and involved 26 third-year students enrolled in the Portuguese Language Teaching Degree program at Eduardo Mondlane University’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. To evaluate the results, participants’ perceptions of their experience writing essays as a tool for learning were collected through a questionnaire. The methodological design included the design, implementation as well as the evaluation of the teaching the planning, the essay production processes as activities aimed at understanding didactic content. The positive effects of the adopted approach included: (i) enhanced understanding and assimilation of the learning content; (ii) encouragement of research and deeper engagement with bibliographic materials that supported the learning of didactic content; and (iii) improvement of academic reading and writing skills. These findings suggest that involving students in the production of academic text genres - that incorporate the processes through which knowledge is constructed - fosters positive attitudes toward learning and contributes to the development of academic literacy.
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