Writing and teaching literature

The role of hypertextual and metatextual writing activities on three school levels

Abstract

Metatextual (writing about texts) and hypertextual writing activities (writing using texts as a source) play different roles in teaching literature for the subject “French” in French-speaking countries both at different school levels and at different times in history. How do these differences show up today in daily practices? 30 teachers in French-speaking Switzerland working in primary, lower secondary and higher secondary schools (respectively grades 6, 8 and 12) were asked to teach a fable by La Fontaine and a short story by a contemporary Swiss author. The observations show that writing activities appeared in all classes either through the use of questionnaires or the production of hypertextual or metatextual texts. In the primary grades, hypertextual writing prepared for reading. In the higher secondary classes, students wrote different text genres that were then compared with the source text. More traditionally, in the lower secondary classes, hypertextual writing ends a teaching sequence allowing space for the students to produce a text. At all levels, metatextual writing was dedicated to expressing subjective responses. At the same time, traditional metatextual activities were practiced in primary classes for writing summaries, and in secondary classes for writing literary essays. Thus, new hypertextual and metatextual forms of writing have settled on traditional practices that have survived longstanding historical changes.