Perfiles de escritores: calidad y recursos de lenguaje académico en ensayos escritos por estudiantes de 8º básico

The purpose of this investigation is to explore what are the profiles of writers regarding the quality of argumentative productions, as well as to establish relationships of these profiles with the academic language resources (RLA) that students deploy. 126 Chilean 8th-grade students from three educational establishments wrote an essay on the use of the Tablet in the classroom. To evaluate the quality, a rubric was validated and the CHILDES program was used to code RLAs. To determine the profiles, a Latent Class Analysis was performed. 69% of the students were classified in the profile called emergent. The rest of the students belong to the second profile, called in development. The use of RLA was analyzed in these two profiles. In the emergent profile, two classes of students are observed that differ substantially in the use (by presence and/or absence) of nominalizations and transdisciplinary vocabulary. The developing profile also presents two classes: one has a higher frequency, for which the use of resources is homogeneous. Instead, the second group is characterized by the display of transdisciplinary vocabulary, nominalizations, and deontic markers. It is concluded that students need more opportunities to learn to build arguments and deploy academic language resources in order to enhance their points of view.