WHAT MAKES A GOOD WRITER - DIFFERENCES IN GOOD AND POOR WRITERS SELF-REGULATION OF WRITING

What makes someone a good writer? To begin to answer this question, we compared the discourse knowledge and self-regulation of good and poor writers, as well as the quality and length of their final texts. Fort y-eight junior-college students were given 50 minutes to write a text comparing Montreal (where they went to school) to another city of thei r choice. Results showed that poor writers were no more linear than go od writers, and no less actively self-regulated their writing. However , good writers waited longer before beginning to write, and wrote text s that were more specifically comparative than did poor writers. Good writers also introduced fewer errors into their texts, more accurately evaluated the structure of their text, and produced longer texts of b etter quality.