Research and Teaching at the Intersection : Navigating the Territory of Grammar and Writing in the Context of Metalinguistic Activity

The studies included in this volume describe the process embedded in learning to write in Language Arts, as well as in teaching it and assessing it, focusing on the metalinguistic activity triggered in this process. Because of the latter, they also examine students’ grammar concepts and the process of learning and teaching grammar. These four objectives are included in the overarching objective of elaborating a theoretical frame that accounts for metalinguistic activity as a social and cognitive activity oriented towards the learning of language use. A qualitative, descriptive, and interpretative perspective is adopted, based on case study and action-research; also, the tenets of sociocultural psychology, contributions from cognitive psychology and functional linguistics, and pedagogic studies concerned with peer and small group interaction in dealing with classroom complexity. The chapters result from the necessary collaboration between researchers and teachers, who contribute their specific knowledge both to the design as well as to the monitoring and analysis of the results of the different projects. We believe that the interest of the book lies precisely in this diversity. This book highlights "the remarkable epistemological, theoretical and methodological coherence of the research program in language teaching conducted by GREAL research group over the past three decades." (Jean-Paul Bronckart, from the "Foreword").

Anna Camps has been a Professor at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) (Spain). She is the founder of GREAL research group (Grup de Recerca sobre Ensenyament i Aprenentatge de Llengües, the Research Group on Teaching and Learning Languages).

Xavier Fontich has been a secondary school teacher and in 2015 obtained a tenure-track position at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) (Spain).