Introduction

The writing skill, which has traditionally been neglected in favor of grammar and speaking practice in English as a foreign language (EFL) classes in primary schools, stands nowadays as a key component in instructed second language acquisition (SLA). The conviction that writing in a second or foreign language is too complex and demanding a task to be implemented with younger learners has been discarded and it is now increasingly acknowledged that, as with adult writers, helping children to express themselves in writing might potentially enhance language development (Harklau, 2002; Manchón, 2011). It is through writing and the provision of feedback on their resulting texts that children come to deploy cognitive processes such as hypothesis formation and testing, noticing, metalinguistic reflection and problem-solving, which may lead them to consolidate their existing knowledge of the second language (L2) or to develop new knowledge. This conceptualisation of feedback on written output as a site for language learning situates it at the interface between L2 writing and SLA research (Manchón, 2011; Ortega, 2012; Williams, 2012). The present study, which falls within this research strand, forms part of a larger research project which aims to elucidate the potential of written output for fostering L2 learning with primary school-age children, by analyzing the effects of instruction and corrective feedback on the children's use of problem-solving strategies during collaborative writing tasks. In doing so, we explore new possibilities for investigating L2 learning with a population that has been underrepresented in L2 writing research.