WRITING 2.0: INTERNET TOOLS AND ACADEMIC WRITING

The research presented here seeks to study the ways in which digital natives tend to construct academic texts, by analysing the procedures and the web 2.0 tools used by university students in producing their written work. The main purpose of the proposal is to examine the role that web 2.0 tools play in writing and the changes that have come about as a result of the emergence of such tools.
To this end, we propose a quantitative and qualitative approach to these texts in order to describe and analyse the resulting product as well as the textual process. This analysis takes as its starting point the main assumptions of the New Literacy Studies (NLS), an innovative research area that refers to the study of writing as a social practice. Within this area, the project is limited to the analysis of digital literacy.
The empirical data collected are analysed in varying degrees of depth, with the aim of observing and examining variables such as the selection criteria for reference sources, multimodality, text scaffolding and the concept of authorship.
With the analysis of these data, we aim to provide an overview of the younger generation’s approach to the written language. This knowledge is essential for designing more practically based didactic actions, leading to in the effective teaching of written language at all levels of education as a practical outcome of the project we are presenting, to be further developed in future work.