First Steps toward Becoming a Teacher: The Experience with the Degree in Primary Education in English

Abstract

During an academic year took place the experience of observing learning strategies through the development of discursive skills for academic writing with two core subjects in the Degree in Primary Education in English (DPEE). A total of N=219 students' rubrics were analyzed. The methodology was based on two instances: The text-based and documentary data analysis resulted from two factors: (a) implementation of academic writing tasks that regulated the level of student guidance: semi-guided and autonomous in textual, discursive genres: argumentation, critical reflection, and (b) a rubric for students' self-assessment. Results showed that the sample group lacked meta-cognition and had continuous deficiency in oral expression, consequently their progress fell somewhat short of expectations. However, the study resulted in facilitation of pupils' discursive oral production in the first and second years for transfer of knowledge to subsequent academic years and in potential changes to the rubric. Keywords The Context of ResearchThis study aimed (1) to improve students' discursive writing skills during their first and second years in the Degree in Primary Education in English (DPEE) at the Faculty of Educational Sciences of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (In accordance with the 2014 ARMIF call, deployment of the Guideway strategy); (2) to demonstrate how such improvement can enhance students' learning of subject matter. Achievement of these two aims depended on students' receiving sufficient guidance and support on two levels: a) First level-Discursive writing skills: For 3 months in 2014 (October-December), discursive writing skills were implemented through two tasks, the first semi-guided, aiming to consolidate criteria that students were working toward acquiring. The second, an individual and autonomous task, aimed at assessing the extent to which students applied the previously consolidated criteria. This is how the pedagogical tool's application phase is identified. Recent studies, focused on the development of writing in university foreign language courses (Byrnes, 2012; Knoch et al., 2015; Puebla, 2015; Yasuda, 2011), have contributed the data considered by this study; in other words, these studies show that when students received guidance in their academic writing, they used the newly learned terminology in their composition tasks. Another question worth exploring is the extent to which students sustained this application and transfer over time.According to Castelló (2009), discursive writing skill involves considering the following points: a) knowing and regulating text composition activities and processes; b) incorporating reasoning processes involved in writing (defining the purpose, activating relevant information, selecting an appropriate genre and type of text); c) planning, researching, selecting, understanding, and synthesizing information from various sources; d) organizing and articulating ideas; e) reviewing and controlling the text being written and, f) considering students' emotion...