Beginning writers need to consider their audience; but this is only possible when the writer has reached a certain stage of cognitive development, as it is necessary to consider an absent reality (e.g. an audience reading the piece at a later point).Adapting the text to the audience is only possible when the physical task of writing becomes automatic and the writer is no longer absorbed by it. Then the writer is free to pay attention to other aspects of the task without overloading cognitive processes. Procedural facilitation involves the use of external aids to support a simplified version of the processes used by expert writers. It may function as a way of enabling beginning writers to adapt what they write for their audiences. At the same time, as this task becomes automatic, it may be seen as a way of promoting writing development. A quasi-experimental study is described in which a procedural facilitation strategy is used to promote writing skills, in particular, the skill of suiting the text to the communicative context. The study was with fifth and ninth grade Portuguese students. The results of the post-test show significant progress for the experimental groups in contrast to the control groups.

In Portuguese higher education, teachers from different scientific areas recognize that their students have difficulties with writing. Nevertheless, preparing students for academic writing is not a priority and any intervention depends more on the interest of particular teachers than on any institutional policy. The development of a more institutional approach to academic writing in Portugal will imply a deeper knowledge of the multifaceted reality of the students' situation, involving identification of their own perceptions of their writing processes and of the academic writing practices they are subject to. This is the aim of our study, based on 1150 students' answers to a questionnaire about literacy practices in Portuguese higher education.Our results show that students seem to be conscious of the procedural nature of writing and of the role and importance of planning, composing and reviewing in the course of their writing processes. As for their perceptions about institutional interventions aimed at fostering writing abilities and teacher feedback on their written work, the answers to the questionnaire allow us to conclude that such support is not frequently offered. There are, however, some differences in the way these issues are considered across the various fields of study.

In this article we analyse Portuguese postgraduate students' problems and difficulties when performing written tasks in the context of postgraduate programmes. The data presented are the result of a study based on two different data collection procedures: a) the analysis of students' written work, organised in a portfolio; b) a questionnaire focussing on the difficulties encountered when performing different tasks involving writing: note-taking; planning a text; writing and editing a text (a literature review); and referencing and quoting according to a reference style (APA). The analysis of students' work revealed problems and difficulties in different areas, namely with selecting information, planning the text, and writing the literature review using academic writing conventions. When asked about the reasons for those problems, students often referred to the difference between the literacy tasks they were used to performing in their undergraduate studies and those that they are requested to develop at the postgraduate level. These differences seem particularly relevant when those tasks are related to assessment practices. At undergraduate level, assessment is often based on examinations, while at postgraduate level it is more dependent on the production of other genres such as literature reviews or essays.'I had never done such a thing before... ' (13) 1 .Selecting the essential information seemed to be a major problem concerning reading notes: '...too much information in the texts seemed relevant.' (5); 'It was difficult to select the content to include in the text... ' (10, 11) ; ' ...to understand what really matters.' (50).Summarising and synthesising the content of texts is also referred to as a problem:'synthesising information in the reading notes' (5); '...difficulties in writing a summary... ' (34); Integrating and organising the contentsIntegrating and organising information seems to be the most frequent problem students had to face. In fact, this is reported by 36 out of the 55 students who answered the questionnaire. There were students who mentioned the difficulty in relating the texts:'Integrating, in a whole, the content of different texts...' (1); '...establishing relationships between the texts...' (17); '...articulating the texts...' (41); '...to combine the perspective, the points of view of different authors.' (43). Integrating ideas in a logic and coherent way is a problem reported by many students: '...linking ideas logically and coherently...' (36); '...connecting ideas and concepts...' (50/54). These difficulties concern either plans or texts: '.. the construction of the synthesis/plan demanded a good assimilation of the content of the texts in order to identify the common aspects, to find a linking element, to put ideas in a sequence.' (45) '... difficulties in writing the final summary...' (34); '...linking the reading notes in the final text.' (42).