The Effects of Metacognitive Strategy Instruction on EFL Writing: A Case Study

• Main Authors: Yu-Min Chin, 秦豫敏
• Other Authors: Yu-Li Yeh
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2003
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/64163303444601407404

碩士 === 國立清華大學 === 外國語文學系 === 91 === This study aims to examine the effects of instruction on two metacognitive strategies, outlining and revising, for EFL writing. There were two stages in the study. The first was to find out the difficulties and strategies EFL college freshmen had in their writing process. The second stage then aimed to investigate whether strategy instruction was beneficial to less effective writers. In the first stage, fourteen freshmen of an intact composition class participated in the study. For scrutinizing their writing process, they were asked to do think aloud when composing their writing. A questionnaire was administered at the end of the first stage to gain initial understanding about students’ writing process, writing strategies, self-improvement, and self-understanding. Furthermore, an interview was conducted to gather personal information and to confirm the data collected via think aloud. In the second stage, strategy instruction was implemented to three less effective students, focusing on two metacognitive strategies utilized by effective students--outlining and revising. Think aloud, interview, and questionnaire, were again used to collect data. In addition, five compositions of each of the three participants were collected to analyze and evaluate their writing performance in the second stage. The scoring was done by two raters with both TWE Scoring Guide for holistic evaluation and ESL Composition Profile for analytical evaluation. Along the process, students’ perception and their writing performance were observed. The major findings of the study show that (1) topic familiarity, vocabulary, grammar, organization, idea generation, time limit, and difficulty in following the taught rules were the seven commonly shared problems students encountered in their writing process. (2) Clustering, translating, reading relevant books or articles, discussing with peers, and learning from model articles are the five commonly used strategies students adopted in their writing process. (3) Outlining and revising were the two strategies found only employed by effective students. (4) The strategy instruction of outlining and revising was beneficial to less effective students in improving content and organization of their writing, the two most significant aspects in writing. (5) Besides content and organization, outlining and revising also assisted students in grammar, word choice, and word form. From the results of the study, three pedagogical implications were drawn--(1) outlining and revising were the two metacognitive strategies which less effective students lacked and needed for enhancing their writing, (2) the strategy instruction on outlining and revising was beneficial to less effective students in strengthening their writing in content, organization, grammar, and vocabulary use, and (3) topic familiarity was an element that influenced students’ writing performance regardless of their proficiency level. However, due to the short-term implementation and limited numbers of the participants, the results of the study may not be totally generalizable to a larger population. It is suggested that long-terms studies be conducted to examine the effects of the two metacognitive strategies of outlining and revising. The second suggestion is that the same strategy instruction can be implemented to, instead of foreign language students, students of other majors or students at different proficiency levels or different ages to examine its effects in writing instruction.