Receipt date: 08/21/2021 / Revision date: 01/10/2022 / Acceptance date: 03/02/2022

Introduction

This research entitled, “The written autobiography: ideal scenario for narrative reflection on the self, the social environment, and the life project in students in grades Sixth and Seventh of Secondary Basic Education,” investigates the textual production in one hundred eighty-seven autobiographies written by students of the Colegio INEM Francisco de Paula Santander, in grades Sixth and Seventh, in order to achieve a valuative approach of linguistic competence as part of the content of the subject of Spanish. The Colegio INEM Francisco de Paula Santander is a district educational institution located in the city of Bogotá, Colombia, of official character, conformed by three levels of formation: Pre-school, Basic, and High School. Its main strength favors the diversified secondary education approach through the offering of different modalities that function as training in the technical, humanistic, and scientific fields, besides being an institution recognized for its flexible, open, and qualified training.

The students belong to the afternoon day and the collection of the autobiographies was conducted from 2015 to 2018, in eight sections of Sixth grade and six sections of Seventh grade.

The research is novel for the field of studies in pedagogy and didactics in the teaching of Spanish in Secondary Basic Education, due to the scarce research on autobiographical writing in the first grades of high school, because this has been used to strengthen grammatical aspects, practice of spelling rules, and to establish processes of interpretation at different semantic levels of the text, but it does not analyze important aspects of it as the emotionality or the student's thoughts about vital issues of their existence. Therefore, the object of study of this research takes into account the linguistic competence and the narration of the self, the search for identity, and the desire for social insertion that prevail in the adolescent age.

From this perspective, an important starting point is created in the curriculum of Secondary Basic Education within the area of Humanities and Spanish Language in Colombia, particularly because the writing of autobiographies is not only subject to the development of skills for linguistic competence, but also for the acquisition of social skills in the student and the conquest of personal identity. 

Through language, students express their innermost feelings and emotions in a desire to manifest and recognize themselves in writing. In doing so, they proclaim their acquired self-confidence and sense of belonging within the social group.

Theoretical Framework

This research values the linguistic competence, from the written proposal through the autobiographical narrative, from the adequate use of language, according to the grammatical norms and the correct orthographic rules. In addition, it makes the autobiographical narrative a complete exercise of written enunciation, of the adequate treatment of information, of the expression of autonomy, of personal initiative, and of the conformation of social aspects, different from textual productions, such as the story or the news, for example.

Some of the research on autobiographical writing in secondary education explores linguistic competence based on grammatical and semantic guidelines such as textual coherence and cohesion. Others analyze the relationship between personal experience and environment, as well as the development of life in ethnic groups marked and identified within cultural diversity. This is the case of Malaver (2020) whose analysis of linguistic autobiography, through the vision of a multilingual university teacher, highlights her perception of the world from the grammar of the teacher's spoken and written languages, such as Yiddish, Spanish, and French. 

Moreira (2018) performs an analysis of autobiography through the so-called "techno-autobiography" because it is based on his university teaching experience, from 1997 to 2017, to show the transformation lived in his teaching, from the face-to-face experience to the virtual experience with the use of ICTs. 

Meanwhile, Daza Peña (2018) analyzes the autobiographies made by students in fourth grade of primary school of the Agricultural Educational Institution "Las aves," Cauca, Colombia, to investigate how the written production of students strengthens the written text. The exploration in ethnic communities and the valuation of the ancestral language are highlighted. 

Lozano's (2017) study aims at action research and consists of valuing writing done by children in lower primary grades as a social activity, where students can interact through it and recognize it as a community exercise. 

Nieto Devia, L.P., and Penagos Fonseca, K.L. (2017) implement a model of autobiographical writing that allows children and young people of the Cultural Center "Cultivarte" to express their feelings and emotions, without being perceived as a chore or academic activity. 

Ramírez, Belmont, Melo, Sánchez, and Rodríguez (2016) conducted an investigation with 130 autobiographies of native children in the sixth grade of primary school in three rural public schools in the south of the State of Morelos, Mexico, seeking to establish linguistic parameters, in accordance with the official curriculum in textual production and psychological interaction produced by autobiographical writing. Although the first objective is achieved, the second is not, and only a brief mention is made of it.

Moriña (2016) analyzes life stories from aspects inherent to the autobiographical model. She takes into account the representations related to the experiences of secondary school students with disabilities to whom she gives identity and voice in a research-participation model. It is a proposal in line with the research reality because the participant acquires the dimension of researcher and co-author of the results, and the researcher reaches the limits of participant, active and committed to a collaborative and related research.

Rendón and Rendón (2015), analyze autobiographies of young university students from the Technological University of Pereira, Colombia, in order to sensitize them to the process of research in the first years of undergraduate studies and examine the textual product from the proposal of objectives, methodologies and formulation of problems from personal experience. 

The research, based on textual products with the participation of secondary education students, approaches the object of study in an elusive way, given the short time span of the academic periods of the grades and the wide range of topics to be covered. On the other hand, in university education, the semester gives a longer period of time, and the analysis of the results in the activities of the students are comprehensive and lax.   

Regarding the steps that were observed to carry out the research, the regulations that guide the Ministry of National Education of Colombia (MEN) were taken into account in correspondence with the General Education Law 115 of 1994 for the area of Spanish Language, in secondary education, with reference to the Sixth and Seventh grades, Law that specifies the guidelines for the textual production of students and the programming framework of linguistic and communicative competence. This policy establishes the term, autobiography, as a written textual production and does not take into account the concepts of "life story" or "life history" of which Huchim and Reyes (2013) make reference, based on Denzin (1978), the first to configure these concepts from their characteristics and raison d'être. For the authors, the important thing is to reflect on personal life and tell it to others because "...narrating a life is an aspect of growth towards an imagined future and, therefore, involves retelling and trying to relive that story" (p.9). Whether the representation used is a life story or an autobiography, it corresponds to the narration of a life experience that is crucial and significant for the author. 

However, following the policy of the Colombian General Education Law 115, the term "autobiography" is comprehensive and all-encompassing because it attempts to narrate a person's life experience through the initial stages, such as pregnancy and birth to a present moment, as opposed to the terms "life story" or "life history" which refer to the narration of only one stage of life written by the protagonist or the account of an aspect of this life by another.   

Regarding the etymology of the term 'autobiography', May (1982) defined it as an examination of conscience made from the author's intimacy and close to the intimate diary (p.29). On the other hand, Yllera (1982) inscribes it within the truthful genre that, together with history, tells the truth about what happened to someone, as evidence of material facts that happened in a real time, while the emotional or "psychic" facts are reinvented by the imagination (p.165). Scarano (1997), for his part, considers the term as a dilemma or edge, calling it a "paradoxical edge" because the autobiographical text is between the description of the real and the discourse that narrates it. From his perspective, "This spectrum of subjectivities introduces us to the problematic relationship between text and life, historical subject and textual subject, and to a specific discursive corpus that highlights and exploits that question: the autobiographical text" (p.2). By placing it at the limit, the autobiography is not a fictional text because the events narrated are not completely imagined, and at the same time, it is not a historical text that contrasts the references with the reality lived by the individual because, in any case, it appeals to the imagination to reconstruct the events. In that sense, it is a definition appropriate to a borderline genre that the author does not wish to delimit, but on the contrary, to entertain herself in its folds. 

Among all the definitions given, Lejeune (1994) is recognized as the formalizer of the term by considering it as "A retrospective account in prose that a real person makes of his own existence, emphasizing his individual life and, in particular, the history of his personality" (p.50). The theorist's explanation contains several interesting aspects. First, it is a reference to the past of a real person, who formalizes his life through the narrative genre and gives special importance to the history of his personality. At this point, the author downplays the importance of the events themselves since the interesting part of the story is the narrator's description of his own personality: who he was, what he did, and above all, how he did it; how he faced the challenges that life imposed on him, how he lived them, what weaknesses he showed, or where he went wrong, all questions that make up the framework of the narrator's personality. However, Lejeune's contribution lies in the triangulation of the "autobiographical pact" formed by author, narrator, and character as a solid set to demarcate the role that each component plays in the text. Textually, Lejeune (1994) delimits the "autobiographical pact" as the need for intimate literatures to "match the identity of the author, the narrator, and the character" (p. 52), that is, equal and corresponding existences, in simultaneity of equivalence. 

As for the concept that frames the notion of 'I', Cuasante (2013, p.167) integrates it into the autobiographical text as part of human existence and considers it a promoter of a self-reflective activity, analytical of reality, and in permanent search for identity. This vision is complemented by Delory-Momberger (2014, p.697) who calls "biographization" the summary of writing one's own life as postures, ornaments, ways of being and acting, by constituting them as a compendium of the image of the 'I'. The context proposed by the author refers not only to the events narrated, but also to those essential references in the life of every human being but little narrated. Non-verbal language and its constituent elements make up everyday life, and yet there is no awareness of its importance and the richness it brings to the individual's life at the time of writing. Material such as music, fashion style, furniture, or forms of the individual personality make up the narrative universe of the individual, but little is taken into account. 

The theme of subjectivity is assumed by Hume (1981) when analyzing it as part of an examination of conscience, of the observation of oneself, and of the effort of memory that the author requires to fix facts, persons, and times in an ordered and systematic text that gives an account of his own life. It includes identity as a quest proper to human nature, and memory is the thread that organizes it and gives it essentiality, "Memory should be considered, and fundamentally for this reason, as the source of personal identity" (p. 412). (p. 412). 

For his part, Arfuch (2013) brings to the subject the recognition of temporality that the author divides by stages as a means to signify his life. "The autobiographical narrative seems to invoke temporality by traversing the obligatory stations of life in the back-and-forth between difference and repetition, between what makes for common experience and what distinguishes each trajectory" (p.27).

On the other hand, studies in narratology give value to the constitutive elements of the autobiographical form by considering them fundamental in its elaboration. For example, Todorov (1970, p.174)) defines the temporal element of autobiography, not as the elapsed time of a life, but as the time of narration, that is, the time of writing. For him, they are two natures distinguishable one from the other, marked by different rhythms and not comparable to each other. The work of Bertaux (1989, p.217) completes this vision, defining autobiography as a linguistic composition constituted by the referent that originates it, the sensibility that nourishes it, and the spatiotemporal conformation that frames it. In this regard, Benveniste's contribution (1997, p.161) summarizes the narratological study by examining the verb to be as the one with the greatest semantic load within the text because it is capable of sustaining the whole autobiographical narration. Therefore, the significance of the verb to be is fundamental in the autobiography as it becomes the very nature of the first-person narrative because it affirms, confirms, and self-refers to the self. 

Regarding adolescent emotionality, Van Manen's approach (2010, 3rd ed., p.63) leads to the need to deepen the understanding of adolescent life and to maintain tact in the teaching-learning process with students. In line with this, Ausubel (1983, p.5) proposes meaningful learning as the means by which the young person recognizes the elements of his environment, his family life, the social group to which he belongs, affective relationships and the circumstances of his educational environment in a natural way without anyone pointing them out, and combines the new knowledge with that already existing in his life. In this sense, autobiography contributes to this recognition and deepens the adolescent's recognition of self, identity, environment, and subjectivity by becoming an explorer of his or her intimacy and self. 

Finally, Savin-Baden and Niekerk (2007, p.463) highlight the importance of seeing the human being behind the author and not only the autobiography as an object of study, "...listen to participants' stories; acknowledge the mutual construction of the research relationship (both researcher and participant have a voice with which to tell their stories)".

The methodology used for the elaboration of the students' autobiographies is developed in several stages. First, the explanation of the form, content, and raison d'être of this writing. Then, the writing process of the text through an outline of the life stories and the correction of form and content of these. Finally, the production of the final autobiographical text by taking into account the use of linguistic competence. Subsequently, the selection of the sample, the reading and revision of the texts, and finally, the analysis and interpretation of the texts to obtain the results of the research were carried out.

The methodological exploration was based on the combination of analysis, between the qualitative method through the categories and subcategories arising from the autobiographies as autobiographical narration, the psychosocial development of the adolescent, linguistic competence, the family, and their life project, analyzed by the Atlas Ti system and the quantitative method through the Likert scale, which took into account the frequency of use of ranges such as environment, self, spelling mistakes, identity, parents' occupation, and age, among others. The results of the mixed methodology produced the tables that support the interpretation and the correspondence of categories, between the quantitative and qualitative analysis. The suggestions put forward by Andréu (2011) and Moriña (2016) were taken into account, for whom the analysis and interpretation of content is complemented by the images associated with the text to form a global sense and account for the character of the autobiographer.

Results

A total of 187 autobiographies were collected, see Table 1, of which 89 were written by girls and 98 by boys in the sixth and seventh grades of the Colegio INEM Francisco de Paula Santander in the afternoon.

Table 1

Distribution of autobiographies written by gender

Genre	Number	%
Female	89	47,6
Male	98	52,4
Total	187	100,0

 

There were more boys, 98, who wrote their autobiography than fewer girls, 89, who wrote their autobiography. These groups of students were chosen indistinctly from the grades where the material was collected. 

From the beginning of the writing, students use knowledge of linguistic competence by expressing their acceptance of their individuality. From there, they narrate their ways of being and self-describe themselves by using adjectives that distinguish and enhance their role as children on real scales. The day of student 1's birthday is a special day because she defines herself as a princess:

 

 

Figure 1. Manuscript from student 1

 

Physical aesthetics is present in the writing of student 2, a student who describes himself as "a very beautiful boy":

 

 

Figure 2. Manuscript from student 2

 

This example shows the degree of psychosocial development of the adolescent in terms of self-affirmation of the self, since the student glimpses that he is the object and subject of his own narration when from the first autobiographical paragraph he concretizes his identity and affirms his unique and individual being through the enunciation of the first person, I. He senses the difference with others, between parents and siblings. 

Likewise, the autobiographical narration takes shape from the first lines of the manuscripts at the beginning of the biographical process enunciated by Delory-Momberger (2014), since the writing of the story gives an account of their childhood years, the family constitution, the educational development they have lived, and the tastes or hobbies they begin to acquire during their vital development. Student 3 describes how, since she was a child, her parents used to take her to Boyacá, a Colombian department of the high plateau geography, favorable to know and explore its water affluents and its natural wealth of fauna and flora. She travels every holiday season to her grandparents' house, and there she learns to ride horses. For the girl, these are unforgettable moments of peace and learning. She narrates it like this: 

 

 

Figure 3. Manuscript from student 3

 

On the other hand, the students' family category is made up of dissimilar groups and is not standardized. Some live in established family homes with parents, children, and siblings, while others live with only one parent. This situation hinders their emotional, psychosocial, and identity development as they would like to have the person they admire and love by their side. Student 4's parents separated when he was young. He describes it as a time of suffering, but he understands that it was better because the parents' continuous fights made home life difficult and did not allow family peace. Today, each of the parents is happy in their new life. The student narrates the following: 

 

 

Figure 4. Manuscript from student 4 

 

Although it was an unfortunate event for the student, his acceptance of reality has allowed him to overcome this separation, to understand the benefit that the situation produced because the family is happy in its own way, and, above all, he learned from this experience that life left him. 

The episode narrated by this student fulfills a principle of autobiography, which consists of learning from experiences. Recapitulating experiences benefits the memory and the rescue of events that are difficult to remember, but evoking them implies rescuing them and learning from past emotions as a way of assimilating the experiences and creating resilience. Although the moment was hard and brought pain to the protagonists, the passage of time makes it possible to perceive the event as a surmountable, admissible, and instructive experience. It is an idea in line with what Ausubel (1983) expressed about meaningful learning: "Human experience involves not only thought but also affect, and only when these are considered together does it enable the individual to enrich the meaning of his or her experience" (p.1).

Another of the categories analyzed in the autobiographical narrative is the profession or job of their parents. The students openly stated their parents' occupation or profession, which implied carrying out an analysis of this information. Table 2 shows that the majority of the texts, 64.2%, described the occupation or profession of the parents, while a minority, 35.8%, did not report it, not because they did not have a job, but because the information was omitted. 

Table 2

Parent's occupation or profession

Profession/occupation of the parents	N	%
Yes No No Report	120 0 67	64,2 0 35,8
Total	187	100

 

The implication contained in this information is interesting because it demonstrates how the opportunity to acquire a defined profession or trade allows for the development and progress of the family nucleus. Although the average parent does not have a university degree, the job opportunity provided by the knowledge of a trade or profession is rewarding and beneficial to the family in terms of economy and stability. The trades and professions are varied and range from a well-paid and legally constituted professional position, to the informal work of street vendors or domestic work or assistance, such as janitorial, car mechanic, operators or assistants in hairdressing salons, warehouses, or food and grocery stores, among others. 

Student 5 says that he lived without his father for the first few months of his life, as he was absent for work at an engineering firm: 

 

 

Figure 5. Manuscript from student 5

 

However, she enjoyed her mother's affection and nurturing, despite the situation. 

The parents of student 6 are biology graduates, and this profession has allowed them to progress as a family and to offer their children a good quality of life:

 

 

Figure 6. Manuscript from student 6 

 

The same does not happen with the parents of student 7. The mother does not work and the father lacks job and economic stability. His job is to be a driver of different vehicles, but the absence of higher or specialized studies does not allow him to work in a consistent and lasting way. This is a situation reflected in the lack of family development: 

 

 

Figure 7. Manuscript from student 7 

 

A situation of an intermediate trade or profession is described by student 8, as her father is a policeman. In Colombia, the education of a police officer is considered a technical career that does not reach university level. Those preparing to become police officers are trained at a military academy. However, police officers enjoy various benefits, such as housing, health and education allowance, annual bonuses for their achievements and performance, and pension after 20 years of service. The student does not see her father often, but she understands his work and is proud of him: 

 

 

Figure 8. Manuscript from student 8 

 

Finally, there is the category of analysis on the life project. This is an important issue for the students, because due to their youth, it requires the proposal of a project that clarifies a possible future as a guideline to follow until they reach their goals. The following table illustrates this:

Table 3

Life Project

You are sure about your life project	N°	%
Yes	110	58,8
No	16	8,6
No Report	61	32,6
Total	187	100,0

 

As can be seen in Table 3, 110 students described a plausible life project, that is, 58.8% responded to the question. On the other hand, a percentage of 8.6%, corresponding to 16 students, did not propose anything, even though they completed the stage. Finally, 32.6% of the total number of students did not report the life project, that is, out of 187 autobiographies, 61 students did not mention the stage. 

In the narratives on the theme, the students who proposed it understand the importance of the life project and, from the beginning, they defined the trade or profession they wish to carry out.

Student 9 firmly and confidently states her desire to attend university and become an early childhood teacher:

 

 

Figure 9. Manuscript from student 9 

 

Student 10 wants to finish high school, become a football player, have a good house for his family and become, day by day, a good person. His life project is optimistic and life-giving:

 

 

Figure 10. Manuscript from student 10 

 

Student 11, on the other hand, has doubts about this and prefers to know more subjects in order to decide on some kind of knowledge:

 

 

Figure 11. Manuscript from student 11 

 

However, student 11 recognizes the country's situation in wanting to change its economy for a better and productive one for all. 

As a research objective, the appropriation that students make of linguistic competence is a very important category of analysis. The autobiographical writing increases it and favors the improvement of the written language from the narration of life stories. Students see the need to reproduce the text in a clear, coherent, and precise manner, with the communicative intention of representing the most important events of their existence and expressing the feelings and emotions that have accompanied their lives so that they may be known by others.

As a whole, the students have learned the meaning of the autobiographical text, its structure and organization and have obtained the ability to express correctly the stages of life through the construction of narrative sequences in each of these, by making the grammatical distribution of the sentence: subject, verb, space, and time. In other words, they have acquired the necessary competence to articulate ideas and feelings through the sentence with complete meaning. They distinguish the subject, the action it performs, and place it in a specific space and time. 

Here are some examples:

 

 

Figure 12. Manuscript from student 12 

 

 

Figure. 13. Manuscript from student 13

 

 

Figure. 14 Manuscript from student 14

 

In the three previous cases, students expand the central statement to develop it through concrete and clear information related to the autobiographical stage in question.  In the same way, they follow the natural narrative order when describing the events that took place during the pregnancy, their process during high school, and their Life Project, which is synthesized in cohesive statements through the appropriate use of punctuation marks: the period followed, the comma, and the period apart; grammatically, they are recognized in the possessive adjectives, such as, "my father and my mother..., my relatives, my aunts"..., my relatives, my aunts"; in the conjugation of verbs in the first person singular, "I," when demonstrating a direct action on the event, "I did sixth grade in another school," or ... "I plan to graduate from the INEM like my brother." Likewise, they provide information about their tastes, "I would love to study gastronomy" ..., "I would also like to study accounting..."; although, in this case, the student recognizes his taste for the study of accounting but examines that it is "the only thing I am good at," that is, he analyzes his limitation and is not afraid to express it.

When narrating each of these stages, the students place them in context and express the values learned from their parents, such as the desire to appreciate and enjoy the tranquility that nature provides, "...and that tranquility of nature was transmitted to me," or the example to be followed by the brother who graduated from the Colegio INEM Francisco de Paula Santander. One senses in this statement the benefit of leaving this school and the pride he feels in achieving it. In fact, the student who narrates his Life Project wishes to finish his High School studies, complete a professional career, "be the best," and sustain a home with a high quality of life to offer his children, "...everything I never had. To be a great dad, the best husband..., but, above all, to be happy and make my children happy."  As can be seen, these are writings with a good command of linguistic competence since they produce narrative, descriptive, and argumentative texts in which there is evidence of adequate communicative ability to express facts, interests, and personal desires. 

In this way, it is evident how the autobiographical organization begins in pregnancy and culminates in the life project. They are aware of being the protagonists of their own story and will try to narrate it as pleasant and entertaining as possible. 

As a way of assimilating meaningful learning, the students based themselves on the grammatical and semantic skills obtained in the primary grades and complemented the process with the new tools provided in the development of the subject. They even strengthened the distinction of the type of text, which in this case corresponds to the narrative, its characteristics, and its function in the field of communication.   

The reality of their lives allowed them to put their linguistic competence into practice through the account of the relationships established between themselves, their families, their friends, their environment, and themselves. The particular circumstances of their lives and the affectations produced by these are the necessary information to organize the autobiographical text. They write from the external facts lived as the mother's pregnancy, the birth, or the childhood, but they interweave them with the emotions and the feelings arisen and, this way, they interweave the narrative text and the descriptive text that forms the narrative textual typology. 

Once the writing process has been completed, the autobiography acquires significance for the student, as he/she realizes that the events narrated are his/her own, individual, and different from the human action of others, and that the world built around him/her belongs to him/her, not as a material product but as the primary input of his/her existence.

The act of reflecting on the self and one's own existence is what allows one to transcend and understand the world as one's own. The students have not only represented their life through a linguistic and communicative act, but they have learned about themselves, about the world, which is their own life, and about others. 

Mastering linguistic competence implies seeing the world broadly and understanding that one is part of a society to which one must contribute the best of oneself in order to build it up and bring progress for all. This is what they expressed in their life projects. They seek transcendence and service to others. They try to surpass their parents through education and specialized training in a field of knowledge in order to build a better and accessible world for themselves, for their families, and for the environment.

Discussion and conclusions

An interesting aspect for the discussion of the topic is related to the contribution of the research to the institutional educational environment, not only for highlighting the importance of autobiographical narration as a textual product characteristic of linguistic competence, but also for promoting a gain within educational establishments by transforming the curricular proposal, in the areas of Spanish and Social Studies, for example, to an adaptable dynamic that allows the creation and promotion of transversal projects notorious for the search for new private and subjective forms of textual production in the students, such as videos, photographs, audiovisual products, among others. These demands of creative composition and its results can boost the quality and academic rigor necessary to provide flexibility, excellence, and curricular competitiveness to the educational center.

Another interesting particularity to highlight is how the written autobiographical narrative, produced by adolescents, represents an ideal framework for analyzing aspects of a social, psychological, affective, linguistic, and even philosophical order, given that they are contents related to the complex, diverse, and multidimensional human condition and, in this case, to a consciousness in formation. 

The groups of students could be massively homogenized to the extent that the development of linguistic competence can be extended to other areas of the curriculum, so that students can write constantly and permanently in all subjects. The development of linguistic competence is left to the area of Spanish, while it is understood that it should be a matter for all areas of knowledge. Understanding a mathematical problem and clearly developing the result is linguistic and communicative competence and involves literal, inferential, and critical reading comprehension. It also involves concise and coherent writing, in accordance with the question posed and the suggested answer. And so, the other curricular areas require linguistic competence for their development, monitoring, and comprehension.

An interesting aspect for the students is the ease acquired in projecting a future for their lives. Those who did so took into account the improvement of the quality of life, both personal and family and even seek the means to help their families and obtain sufficient academic knowledge that allows them to support other family members who have supported and helped them. That is to say, there coexists in them a deep human sense of collaboration and dedication to the service of others. Their intentions are altruistic in seeking the dynamics of equity for social change and transformation.     

The students who proposed the life project seek to improve the conditions of poverty of their families, achieve their goals, and form a remarkable family by making up for the mistakes made by their parents, such as lack of education that would have allowed them to find adequate professional jobs; not abandoning their children; accompanying them throughout the process of growth and development; obtaining higher incomes; increasing the standard of living of their families; enjoying life; and trying to be happy with each new experience.

The narration of the autobiographical fact is related to the expression of identity, to the social environment, and to the idea of self in young students by the action exercised to reflect on themselves in the acquisition of an early self-awareness. Taking this step implies knowing the change and allowing oneself to transform one's individual life and the environment. 

Several of them achieved the recapitulation of their lives through a continuous exercise of memory activation and mental organization for the linguistic and communicative expression of the autobiographical writing. Organizing ideas about the actions of their lives and adapting them to the autobiographical writing, in a clear and coherent way, is an act of conscience and maturity because it implies the mastery of linguistic competence and the contrast with their own emotionality and thought.

However, a minority of students did not achieve written mastery of the competence by failing in spelling rules, logical adequacy of the narrative sequence, elaboration of all stages of life, and shortcomings in the organization of ideas for an adequate elaboration of textual coherence and cohesion. 

It would be necessary to repeat the autobiographical exercise in a specific dynamic and of longer duration on the error-correction model that allows transforming the written text based on the limitations of the linguistic competence of each student and strengthening those aspects in which better skills are observed.  

Another limitation found is related to the life project. Most of them raised it and were clear about its convenience, but there were students who neglected their narration and did not explore this stage of importance for their life, not knowing what to do or how to prepare for the future.

 

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