Abstract

MARQUEZ, María Silvina; IPARRAGUIRRE, María Sol  and  BENGTSSON, Astrid Mariana. An overview on learning to write from a developmental- educational and semiotic perspective. Interdisciplinaria [online]. 2015, vol.32, n.1, pp.151-168. ISSN 1668-7027.

This paper presents a review about the learning of writing. It integrates relevant contributions from fields of Psychology, Linguistics and Semiotics during the last 30 years. We begin by addressing different aspects of writing as a semiotic object and synthesize its uses and functions within a culture. Writing functions as a mnemonic tool through graphic representation, allowing preservation, transmission and modification of collective shared knowledge, enabling its functioning as an epistemic tool. Writing also has regulatory functions on social behavior. It contributes to the organization of social roles and the establishment of hierarchical order through the enactment of written laws. It also contributes to the standardization of a linguistic variety -the one used for writing- in order to fulfill several official functions related to public administration and education. Consequently, the linguistic variety represented in writing usually becomes a linguistic model, outlining diverse social and personal paths in learning to write. Finally, we focus on its aesthetic and imaginative function, which is present in a variety of genres. We then describe the attributes of writing as a semiotic system, including written texts' distinctive features according to their functions in certain situational and socio-cultural settings. All writing systems have a dual nature: they constitute physical objects with an external existence that is relatively independent from its context of production, also are semiotic objects that enable to represent something else. In writing systems, a set of graphic elements are integrated on a surface. Rules conventionally established and formal properties are the base of these graphic elements. These graphic marks endure through time and space, allowing for iterative formal and conceptual revision and change. A dialectic relationship between mind and semiotic system is established, in which representational systems, as external scaffolding, expanding the possibilities of thought. Thereby, this technology of thought entails important cognitive and social transformations by helping to construct a multiple and broadening personal perspective. This will allow the conversion of own representations into meta- representations through their externalization, and the acquirement of new and more complex ways of knowing. In the second part of this article, we tackle relevant characteristics of learning to write along a person's life. This process begins almost from birth and continues through adult life, under the guide of someone with more expertise. Becoming an expert writer requires more than two decades of continuous instruction and practice. The appropriation of writing requires processes correlated at multiple cognitive dimensions and linguistic levels, deeply related to specific contexts of use. The dimensions considered are the following: metaknowledge; general knowledge about writing; specific knowledge regarding graph phonic, syntactic, and textual aspects; and procedural knowledge. We review studies regarding the different dimensions involved in this process from a developmental and educational perspective. We organize such review by considering three moments. The stage named roots of literacy comprises all the activities and conceptualizations of reading and writing that children carry out in the course of early childhood, which precedes conventional literacy. During schooling writing becomes a learning object, and children's main efforts move from mastering the alphabetic code to understanding coherence and cohesion, as well as producing texts of several types. When referring to learning to write during schooling we also focus on learners' conceptions of this process. The conceptions' viewpoint enables us to understand the learners' own perspective displayed in first person. Beyond schooling learning to write continues developing towards the ability of constructing and reconstructing knowledge through reading and writing. Finally, we analyze contributions on learning to write from a multimodal perspective. We acknowledge a research vacancy which would articulate learners' resources for text production and their conceptions about this process. Based on the idea that learning entails unfolding a variety of resources -particularly semiotic and epistemic- in a situated and contextualized manner, we propose that an articulation among the different approaches reviewed in this paper will help to overcome the deficit perspectives.

Keywords : Writing; Semiotic system; Resources; Conceptions.

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