Teaching Writing: What the Evidence Says

Résumé

Language teaching is the basis of global education. Despite Brazilian attempts to improve, the results reveal a lack of progress in the final Years, especially with regard to teaching writing. Therefore, it is necessary to gather scientific evidence on effective teaching of writing. This article aims to bring this information together. To this end, three surveys were carried out: bibliographical review of scientific articles, titles of writing manuals from the most renowned publishers, rigorous meta-analyses that investigated more effective strategies for teaching reading. It was found that Brazilian scientific studies focus on theories and their practical applications. The manuals sometimes contained normative grammar and sometimes the teaching experiences of their authors. The meta-analyses showed a set of writing teaching strategies based on 5 pillars: the fundamentals of writing, grammatical knowledge, instruments for coherence, vocabulary mastery and the phases of the writing process.