Fostering Reflection in Academic Writing: An ELP Approach

The chapter presents a series of activities grounded in the underlying principles of the European Language Portfolio (ELP) and geared specifically to the skills involved in academic writing. The over-arching goal of these individual and collaborative tasks is to encourage learners to reflect on their skills and learning processes, adapting these to the conventions required in various genres of academic writing. What clearly lies at the basis of all steps taken is the ongoing development of metacognitive skills and strategies, strengthening the learners’ ability to take a step back and look at their own academic writing and that of their peers, with a view to refining and polishing their output in order to make it fit with the demands of the respective discourse community. The fact that learners are developing skills which will allow them entry into this community highlights their role as “social agents” as discussed in the first pages of the Common Europe-an Framework of Reference (CEFR, Council of Europe 2001).