Implementing and analyzing self-monitoring in the EFL writing classroom

Villa María

Congreso; Segundas Jornadas de ELT en la UNVM: Challenges in the English Language Classroom; 2013

Universidad Nacional de Villa María

Taking into account that shared notions of feedback describe this process as a dialogue which is thought to be a fundamental component of the process of scaffolding language learning, the implementation of techniques that seek to enhance such interaction constitute an interesting and necessary focus of current research in L2 writing. After several years of researching into feedback ?and focusing on its different types and agents-, we felt the need to incorporate the students? voices into our research so as to gain a greater and better understanding of the student-teacher interaction during the writing process. In this respect, self-monitoring stands as a valuable process to be explored since it implies the participation of students as the initiators of the process of feedback and subsequent revision of written texts. When referring to some of the theoretical and practical principles underlying feedback on writing, Lynn Goldstein (2010) claimed: ?effective feedback doesn?t start with the text, and isn?t just about responding to texts; it starts with the student, responding to the student, what the student wants to accomplish, what the student needs, and ultimately about teachers and students communicating with each other? (p.76). The objective of this presentation is, on the one hand, to describe a research project we are currently conducting in the Lengua Inglesa II Chair at Facultad de Lenguas, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, which aims at exploring the implementation of self-monitoring within a framework applied for electronic feedback on writing and, on the other hand, to report an analysis of the preliminary results obtained in 2012.