In this paper, the authors analyse writing practice in a foreign language (in this case French) in order to study the correlation between the collective improvement of texts and the individual progress in mastering the writing process. They first point out their stance on the notion of collaboration and in particular the notion of "peercollaboration" (in pairwork clusters) which characterises the writing sessions they have set up. They then set out the framework within which their analyses take place: that of the learning parameters described by (neuro)cognitive approaches, and in particular that of (in French) engagement actif (i.e. “self-determination” or “active learning”, according to R. M. Ryan and E. L. Deci); they then present the setup they decided on and describe their corpus. The analysis of this corpus, and in particular of the manifestations of learner “self-determination” or “active learning”, led to a proposal of a typology of this learning parameter. They end with recommendations to assess the learners' appropriation of writing skills.