Metacognitive knowledge in EFL writing. (Language Teaching & Learning).

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of metacognitive knowledge on writing in English as a foreign language. Data were collected from 115 Bulgarian students who wrote argumentative essays in English. A subset sample of 40 essays representing good and poor writing was selected through blind scoring for further analysis. Students' knowledge about their writing strategies and the writing task was measured through questionnaires. The results indicate that there is a direct relationship between the quality of writing and the students' metacognitive knowledge. The quality of the written product seems to be affected by the students' knowledge about their method of planning and about the conventions of writing in the target language

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In the past three decades since the emergence of metacognitive theory (Flavell, 1976, 1979) there have been a number of studies that investigate the role of self-knowledge and control over cognitive activities in different solving-problem situations (Baker & Brown, 1984; Schoenfeld, 1987; Garner, 1994; Carrell, 1989). The results from this research have helped us learn more about the way human beings successfully solve complex cognitive tasks using strategic knowledge about the goals to be achieved. Although writing (in some of its forms) has been defined as a solving-problem task (Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1985, 1987), there have been only a few studies that deal with the role of metacognition in L1 and L2 writing (Devine, 1993; Devine, Railey, and Boshoff, 1993; Kasper, 1997). The results from these studies clearly indicate that there is a link between metacognitive knowledge and writing performance. The above-mentioned studies have English as a second language (ESL) students as their subjects. There are many similarities between ESL and English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching, but there is one major difference. Students in an EFL classroom have limited exposure to the language being studied. This is because they study in a country where English is not spoken. They lack the additional input that ESL students have when surrounded by ample examples of the language in an English speaking country. It seems that in an EFL situation metacognitive knowledge will be of more importance to the successful completion of a writing task. Work on contrastive rhetoric and genre analysis has demonstrated that making students aware of the different preferences with regard to text organization in different cultures can have an important impact on their writing (Connor & Kaplan, 1987, Leki, 1992; Raimes, 1991).

Metacognition can be defined as thinking about your own thinking. Flavell (1979) distinguishes between two major dimensions of metacognition: knowledge of cognition and regulation of cognition. While the first one refers to the information a learner has about his/her cognitive resources with regard to the task demands, the second dimension involves the self-regulating mechanisms used in any problem-solving situation. The present study investigates the role of the two components of metacognitive knowledge on the writing performance of EFL writers through comparing two groups of Good and Poor writers using questionnaires and retrospective interviews. The questions that we try to answer are as follows:

1. Are students aware of the strategies they use when writing in a foreign language and do these strategies differ for good and poor writers?

2. Is there a difference in the metacognitive knowledge good and poor writers have about the task?

Sampling

A.. Students

The subjects were 18 -- year-old Bulgarian students in their junior year of an English Language School in Bulgaria. In order to control for such factors as: a) native language, b) educational background, c) culture, d) previous experience in studying English, and e) teacher variability, the study was conducted with the considerably homogenous group of students at only one school. At the time of the experiment they had studied English for four years -- one year of intensive studying (6 hours at school and at least 3 hours preparing homework every day), followed by three years of content courses studied in English. The students' knowledge of the language had been acquired in a classroom environment. Their proficiency was measured through the Grammar and Vocabulary part of the Michigan Test of English Language Proficiency and they were found to range between upper intermediate and low advanced level of knowledge of English

B. Essays

The writing sample was collected under carefully controlled conditions. All eleventh grade students (a total of 115) wrote their essays during their regular forty-five minute English class. The prompt for the essay was: "Children are pushed into adulthood too early. Do you agree or disagree. Give your reasons." The prompt required the students to write an argumentative essay -- a style of writing that lends itself to engaging in problem-solving composing, which demands the use of higher-level cognitive strategies.

In order to determine the final sample of two groups of good and poor writers the essays were scored blindly by two raters using a holistic scale. The average scores ranged from 2.00 (the lowest) to 6.00 (the highest). The interrater reliability as computed by the Pearson product moment correlation was found to be .94. This test measures the difference between the scores assigned by the two raters. The high correlation between the scores in this case indicates that the two raters were using the same criteria in evaluating the students' writing. Twenty of the essays graded with the lowest scores were chosen for the final sample of poor writing. Another twenty essays, which had received the highest scores, constituted the sample of good writing.

Procedures

The role of the different components of metacognitive knowledge on the students' performance in EFL writing was studied through two questionnaires. The first questionnaire (see appendix A) was devised to capture the students' knowledge about the strategies they use when writing in a foreign language. It was distributed among all 115 students right after the completion of the writing task. The questionnaire, which is an adapted version of the one used by Hirose and Sasaki (1994), was translated in Bulgarian. A better instrument for measuring metacognitive knowledge is the think-aloud protocol (Emig, 1971) whereby students record their thoughts during the actual process of writing. In this study it was not possible to use think- aloud protocols due to the large size of the sample.

The second questionnaire (see Appendix B) was used to probe for any differences in the performance of good and poor writers resulting from their metacognitive knowledge about the task. Some of the questions used were taken from Hirose and Sasaki's questionnaire (1994), while others were devised specifically for the writing task of this study. The questionnaire was given only to the forty students selected for the final sample one week after the students had written the essays.

Results

1. Good and Poor writers' knowledge about writing strategies

Pre-writing activities

Sixteen students of the good writers' group (80%) reported that they did not start writing immediately but spent some time on pre-writing activities. Most of the good writers had a written plan for the essay. Some had engaged in a sort of brainstorming activity (as seen from their drafts) by either jotting down ideas, words and phrases or drawing clusters of ideas associated with the main topic. Additionally, it was obvious from the drafts that some of the good writers had planned the structure of the essay.

In contrast, only six students, i.e. (30%) of the poor writers' group reported spending some time on pre-writing activities. Fourteen students stated that they had started to write directly after the prompt was given. The drafts reveal that none of the poor writers planned the organization of the structure of the essay.

While-writing processes

One of the major differences found after analyzing the self-described writing activities of the two groups was the manner in which the contents and structure of the essays were planned. Sixteen students of the good writers' group had plans for their essays. Eleven of them stated that they were planning during the process of writing in addition to their initial pre-writing planning. Some were more specific and explained that they had a plan but kept changing it during the process of writing. Only one student among the good writers reported that her goal was to write as much as possible.

In contrast, the poor writers did less planning and when they engaged in planning it was at a different point in the writing process. Eight students did not have any plan for writing. Fourteen people answered that they had planned the content of the essay while writing but unlike the good writers only five of them had initial plans. It seems that in this case writing was being done on-line and was therefore less successful. Four students from this group described their main goal as writing as much as possible.

A closer look at the answers to some questions about the ongoing process of writing reveal interesting characteristics within the two groups. Almost the same number of good and poor writers (15 and 12 respectively) report trying to come up with new ideas at the point where they got stuck for things to write about. The differences between the two groups can be seen only if one compares these answers to the students' answers about planning. Good writers had initial plans and whenever they got stuck for ideas they stopped and tried to come up with additional arguments or details to support their arguments. Unlike them, poor writers reported no initial planning. They appear to be on-line, instantaneous planners, who tried to write as much as possible. When they got stuck for ideas they stopped and tried to find something to continue to write about. The good writers' writing processes seem to display features of a problem solving procedure while the poor writers seemed not to have been involved in such decision-making processes. Such an interpretation of the results lends strong support of Bereiter and Scardamalia's (1987) model of writing.

Post-writing activities (revisions)

From the brief answers that students gave to the questions in this part of the survey it became clear that most of the good writers managed to do some revisions despite the short time they had for writing. Only six students from the good writers' group handed in their essays right after finishing writing, while thirteen of the poor writers (twice the number of good writers) submitted their essays right away.

2. Good and Poor writers' metacognitive knowledge about the task

The second hypothesis in this study stated that good and poor writers would differ in their metacognitive knowledge of English expository writing. In order to test this hypothesis the answers from the second questionnaire were tested by two tailed z-tests (see Table 1). In this test the percentages reflect the number of correct answers given to each of the questions from the Questionnaire on Metacognitive Knowledge. See issue's website <http://rapidintellect.com/AEQweb/fallp.htm>

Five of the nine z-tests resulted in statistically significant z values at the .05 confidence level. These findings indicate that good and poor writers differ in their knowledge about expository writing in English. A closer look at the results suggests that the good writers were better acquainted with such concepts as thesis statement, coherence and cohesion, as well as with the structure of a typical paragraph in English expository writing. Good writers also did better than poor writers in choosing the best-organized sample paragraph in the questionnaire. It should be noted that the sample paragraphs had the same topic but differed in degree of cohesion and coherence. Last but not least, it is important to mention that three of the poor writers were not able to identify the type of essay they had to write correctly. All three defined the essay as a narrative instead of an argumentative one. It seems that they were not aware of the overall discourse function of the type of writing they were required to do and such a major misconception certainly led to inadequate performance on the writing task.

Discussion

The results from the data analysis indicate that good and poor writers in this sample differed in their writing strategies. These findings concur with results from previous studies in both L1 and L2, which characterize the writing process of skilled writers as recursive in nature (Flower and Hayes, 1981; Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1987; Zamel, 1983; Raimes, 1987; Pennington and So, 1993). The poor writers in this study seemed to start writing without having any specific plan in mind and reported planning mainly in the process of writing. In addition, several of the poor writers reported that their goal was to write as much as possible, while planning on-line. Such writing strategies seem typical of both L1 and L2 unskilled writers (Pennington and So, 1993, Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1987; Raimes, 1985).

Results from the second questionnaire revealed differences in the students' knowledge about the task especially with regard to the definitions of certain concepts like cohesion, coherence and thesis statement. Some of the poor writers defined incorrectly the concept of paragraph and later chose the paragraph with most digressions as being the best one. This may be taken to mean that these poor writers are not aware of the typical structure of a paragraph in English expository writing and prefer paragraphs with looser structure. Their personal preference reflects the accepted style of writing in Bulgarian. Such a conclusion is warranted by the fact that the same students organized their own essays in a similar manner. However, the quality of the essays was evaluated according to the standards for writing an argumentative essay in English and therefore the essays written by these students were judged to be of poor quality.

It seems that in an EFL context one's knowledge of the task variables is of crucial importance since students hardly have a chance to get acquainted with typical examples of different genres in the target language. Teachers need to not only explicitly teach concepts typical for English expository writing but also provide ample evidence of how these concepts are applied in exemplary texts. Research in psychology (Carter, 1990) points to the greater value of local i.e. domain specific knowledge for writing expertise than general knowledge. We cannot assume that students will always be able to transfer general heuristic strategies (i.e. general knowledge) from one area to another. Writing is a social as well as cognitive process. Writing patterns differ across cultures and discourse communities. In order to master the writing style of a particular community or genre students should be exposed to numerous examples of that genre.

In conclusion, the results from this study suggest that some EFL writers fail at writing because they lack conscious knowledge about the complexity of writing as a cognitive task. Teachers' need to find appropriate pedagogical tools to help their students become aware of the different factors that shape their writing. Explicit instruction in metacognitive strategies and characteristic features of the writing task should become part of the instructional activities in a writing class. Students should be sensitized to their writing style and attitude to writing through questionnaires, discussions, and reflective journals. Such activities will help us change our students' metacognitive model of writing and thus become more competent writers.

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Dr. Angelova is an assistant professor in TESOL at Cleveland State University. Her research interests are in teacher education, ESL writing, and Service-learning.