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Self-regulation in writing

Self-regulation in writing

How does it show and differ in experts' and novices' writing?

"Writers perform a problem solving task when producing text" (Hayes/Flower, 1980; Bereiter/Scardamalia 1985).

Problem solving while writing involves information gathering and a number of reflection, evaluation and knowledge generation tasks. These are steered by the writers memory and motivation to write. The complex processes of both the internal cognitive thought processes and the external processes rely on self-regulation of the author. Instances of self-regulation can be detected from traces in key-logs of subjects, in verbal protocols and in screen videos of process sessions, but they are not visible in the final text product. It can be assumed that expert writers use different self-regulation strategies than novices and my research project will focus on defining prototypical self-regulation elements in writing processes and compare experts' and novices' production processes in this respect, in order to increase knowledge about the differences.

Research question:

  • What are the differences between experts and novices in terms of self-regulation and self-regulation strategies in writing?


Subjects:

  • Novices (second-semester MA students of text production and text analysis course in German
    at the school).
  • Experienced writers (professional technical writers with at least 8-10 years of experience).

Carmen Heine