Teaching the self-revision of written texts

Abstract

Introduction: Writing academic texts requires revision skills that few students develop spontaneously. This article presents a didactic proposal focused on teaching self-revision as a metacognitive process, implemented with 35 twelfth-grade pre-university students in Artemisa, Cuba. Materials and methods: Using a pre-experimental design with initial and final tests, the quality of academic essays was evaluated before and after a six-session workshop based on Flower and Hayes' (1981) cognitive model and self-regulation strategies, using self-revision guides with indicators of coherence, cohesion, and contextual appropriateness. Results: The results show significant improvements in text quality: the overall mean increased from 12.4 to 16.8 points (out of 20). By dimension, coherence increased from 2.8 to 4.1; cohesion improved notably in the use of connectives; and contextual appropriateness increased from 3.0 to 4.0. Grammatical and spelling accuracy increased from 2.1 to 3.8. Ninety-one percent of participants found the learned strategies useful. Discussion: The findings confirm that explicit instruction in self-revision with a metacognitive approach produces substantial improvements in writing, consistent with previous studies. Peer review complemented the process, although the lack of a control group is noted as a limitation. Conclusions: It is concluded that systematic self-revision, mediated by explicit guidelines and collaborative feedback, contributes to the development of writing competence and student autonomy, moving beyond the reductionist view of revision as mere error correction.