Performance and intentionality when considering expectations, agreements and practices to write essays in a high school Mexican context

Abstract

Writing scholar essays is controversial because of different conceptions of this textual genre in each context, its characteristics, different approaches in academic perspectives and written practices. Students need to solve formal structuring, content, knowledge, organization of ideas, opinions, critical positions and written expectations in different classes. It is essential to determine the objectives and cases in which writing essays in high school is justified. Given the diversity of essays, it is ideal to reach agreements with students about the characteristics of this textual genre in specific situations in school communication. The existence of a variety of considerations to write essays favors the difficulty for its characterization. In school context, these texts involve multiple criteria of writing, textual resources and practices of academic socialization. Essays have been studied in the perspectives of school writing1,2 and textual conceptions of teachers3 and students.4–6