Investigating the Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in English Writing ppt

HKBU Papers in Applied Language Studies Vol. 14, 2010 Investigating the Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in English Writing 1 Zhang Yanyan Wuhan University Abstract Metacognitive knowledge is knowledge about learning. Recent research suggests that metacognitive knowledge plays an important function in cognitive activities concerning language use and acquisition. This paper aims to investigate the role of metacognitive knowledge in the English writing of Chinese EFL learners. The present study involves 120 non-English major freshmen in China as participants to complete an English writing task and a self-designed questionnaire on metacognitive knowledge. It is found that the learners’ metacognitive knowledge base is not strong, metacognitive knowledge and its three components, i.e., person knowledge, task knowledge and strategic knowledge, are all positively correlated with English writing performance, and successful employment of metacognitive knowledge helps facilitate EFL learners’ writing proficiency. The results demonstrate that a good command of metacognitive knowledge can empower EFL learners in their English writing and cultivate their learning autonomy in English learning. 1. Introduction Recent decades has witnessed an increasing recognition of the importance of metacognitive knowledge in cognitive activities related to language use and acquisition (e.g., Baker & Brown, 1984; Devine, 1993; Flavell, 1979; Kasper, 1997; Vandergrift, 2002; Wenden, 1998; Xu & Tang, 2007). Many studies have been carried out to examine the function of metacognitive knowledge in ESL/EFL learner’s performance of receptive English skills, such as reading and listening Zhang: Investigating the Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in English Writing 26 (e.g., Baker & Brown, 1984; Vandergrift, 2002; Xu & Tang, 2007; Yang & Zhang, 2002). It has been found that the learners’ beliefs and knowledge about learning play a critical role in those activities. However, relatively little research has been conducted to investigate the role of metacognitive knowledge in EFL learner’s performance of productive English skills, particularly writing, and relevant empirical studies are especially scarce in the Chinese context (Xu & Tang, 2005). To address the lack, this paper aims to investigate the role of metacognitive knowledge in the English writing of Chinese EFL learners, in the hope of shedding some light on the teaching and learning of EFL writing skill in China. 2. Literature Review 2.1 Metacognitive Knowledge John Flavell first proposed metacognition theory in the 1970s. He defined metacognition as knowledge that focuses on or regulates any part of cognitive activity and identified two general dimensions of metacognition: knowledge and experience (Flavell, 1979). In his work Cognitive Development, Flavell (1985) further elaborated that our metacognitive knowledge base consists of what we have learned through experience about cognitive activities. From a theoretical perspective, Wenden (1998, p.517) summarizes the defining characteristics of metacognitive knowledge as follows: (1) a part of a learner’s store of acquired knowledge (2) relatively stable and statable (3) early developing (4) a system of related ideas (5) an abstract representation of a learner’s experience According to Flavell (1979, 1985), metacognitive knowledge involves three distinct and highly interactive knowledge variables: person knowledge, task knowledge, and strategic knowledge. Person knowledge refers to general knowledge that learners have Zhang: Investigating the Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in English Writing 27 acquired about themselves as learners, which may facilitate or inhibit learning. Wenden (1998) suggests that person knowledge may include cognitive and affective variables such as age, language aptitude, and motivation, specific knowledge learners have acquired about how these factors may function in their experience, knowledge about their proficiency in a certain area, self-efficacy beliefs about their general ability as learners, and beliefs about their ability to achieve specific learning goals. With regard to writing in English as a foreign language, person knowledge may refer to the knowledge EFL learners have acquired about themselves as writers, such as their attitude towards and motivation in English writing, their beliefs about their writing proficiency and their perceived ability to achieve certain writing objectives. Task knowledge generally involves three aspects: learners’ knowledge about the task purpose and how it will meet their learning needs and goals (Breen, 1987); knowledge about the nature of a particular task identified through a classification process; information about a task’s demands, such as the approach to the task and the knowledge and skills needed to complete the task (Wenden, 1998). In relation to EFL writing, task knowledge may include learners’ knowledge about the purpose of a certain writing task, such as to improve their writing ability, and their information about the required skills to fulfill the task, such as a good command of English vocabulary and grammar, and a skillful mastery of developing ideas clearly and logically. Strategic knowledge refers to general knowledge about the types and usefulness of strategies, and specific knowledge about their utility for learning. In second language acquisition, learners’ retrospection upon their language learning strategies is often taken as evidence of their stored strategic knowledge (Wenden, 1998). Of particular importance are metacognitive strategies, which are “general skills through which learners manage, direct, regulate, guide their learning, i.e. planning, monitoring and evaluating” (Wenden, 1998, p.519). In the case of writing in English as a foreign language, strategic knowledge often refers to EFL learners’ knowledge about pre-writing planning, on-writing monitoring of errors, post-writing checking and reflection Zhang: Investigating the Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in English Writing 28 of their writing processes and products. 2.2 Metacognitive Knowledge and English Learning Research in the past few decades has demonstrated that possession of a strong metacognitive knowledge base is critical to successful learning (e.g., Baker & Brown, 1984; Devine, 1993; Flavell, 1979; Kasper, 1997; Vandergrift, 2002; Xu & Tang, 2007) and that a good learner is “one who has ample metacognitive knowledge about the self as learner, about the nature of the cognitive task at hand, and about appropriate strategies for achieving cognitive goals” (Devine, 1993, p.109). The recognition of the importance of metacognitive knowledge in learning has led to an increasing number of relevant studies in the field of second language acquisition. While extensive research has been carried out on the role of metacognition in listening and reading performance of ESL/EFL learners (see Baker & Brown, 1984; Devine, 1993; Yang & Zhang, 2002), corresponding research in writing has been relatively rare (Devine, 1993), especially in the Chinese context (Xu & Tang, 2005). A pioneer study on ESL writing in this vein is Devine, Railey & Boshoff (1993), which attempted to examine the influence of metacognition on second language writing by investigating cognitive models in 10 second language and 10 first language beginning writers and assessing the effects of these models on their writing performance. The results suggest a potential link between ESL learners’ metacognitive models and their writing performance. Another study on metacognition and writing is Zimmerman & Bandura (1994), which examined the influence of beliefs that learners hold about their ability to mobilize and direct resources for learning and to sustain this effort (i.e. self-efficacy beliefs) on their writing performance. They proposed a causal model of student self-regulation of writing achievement, which indicates a close relationship between metacognitive person knowledge and learners’ writing outcome. Zhang: Investigating the Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in English Writing 29 Kasper (1997) further explored the metacognitive growth of 67 intermediate level ESL students and 53 advanced level ESL students from diverse ethnic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds. She found that ESL students’ metacognitive growth correlates significantly and positively with their actual writing performance, along and across the three components of metacognitive knowledge base. The above three studies suggest a positive role of metacognitive knowledge in English writing and have presented an important contribution to the field. However, all these studies involve participants of ESL students only. As English has been given a high priority in the curriculum in China, where there is a large population of EFL learners, English writing is of great importance for Chinese students and research on English writing development and instruction is therefore in urgent need. So far, the studies on metacognition and writing in the Chinese context have been rather rare, and empirical studies are especially scarce (Xu & Tang, 2005). Lu (2006) is an earliest study that explored the relationship between metacognitive strategies and English writing, but the participants of this study were senior English major students and thus cannot represent non-English majors who far outnumber English majors in China. Another more recent study of relevance is Xu & Tang (2007), which compared 5 successful and 5 unsuccessful Chinese EFL writers’ metacognitive knowledge by using think-aloud protocols and interviews. They found that good writers are superior to poor ones in metacognitive knowledge and attribute the good writers’ success to their possession of a better metacognitive knowledge base. Although insightful, Xu & Tang’s study is a qualitative analysis of only a few non-English major students’ metacognitive knowledge and its generalizability therefore awaits further confirmation. From the review of previous studies, we notice a few research gaps in this field. First, the research on the relationship between metacognition and writing is still relatively rare, and the existing studies tend to focus on ESL contexts. Second, empirical studies of large scales are limited, especially in the Chinese context. Third, the previous studies have seldom controlled the influence of English Zhang: Investigating the Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in English Writing 30 proficiency on English writing. Fourth, both Devine et. al.’s (1993) proposed link between metacognitive knowledge and writing performance and Zimmerman & Bandura’s (1994) causal model on writing achievement need proofs from other studies. To address the lack, the present study undertakes an investigation of the role of metacognitive knowledge in the English writing of 120 non-English major EFL learners in Mainland China. The specific research questions are as follows: (1) What is the current situation of Chinese EFL writers’ metacognitive knowledge base and its three components? (2) What’s the relationship between metacognitive knowledge and English writing? (3) Can the development of metacognitive knowledge help facilitate English writing? In addition, this research also intends to explore the relationship between metacognitive knowledge and English writing by controlling English proficiency so as to formulate an influence route model of metacognitive knowledge on English writing. 3. Research Design 3.1 Participants The participants of this study involve 120 freshmen from 4 intact English classes across various non-English majors, including chemistry, physics, surveying, mathematics, management, accounting, etc., in a key university in Mainland China. There are 68 males and 52 females. When the study was carried out, the students were at the beginning of their second semester in university, so all the students have been learning English for at least six years. According to the teaching syllabus of college English in China, first-year university students should be able to write an English essay of 150 to 200 words within thirty minutes. Zhang: Investigating the Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in English Writing 31 3.2 Instruments (1) Metacognitive Knowledge Questionnaire Questionnaires have often been used in previous research on learners’ metacognitive knowledge in English reading, listening and writing performance, and have been proved to be an effective tool to study metacognition. Borrowing insights from theoretical discussions on the concept of metacognitive knowledge (e.g., Wenden, 1998) and previously used questionnaires (see Pajares, Hartley & Valiante (2001) for writing self-efficacy questionnaire; Lu (2006) for metacognitive strategies questionnaire), the author of the present paper designed a metacognitive knowledge questionnaire on English writing in the Chinese context. The questionnaire consists of two sections, with the first aiming to gather the participants’ basic information, such as the scores of their College English course 2 in the first semester, and the other intending to illicit the learners’ retrospection upon their stored knowledge about English writing, including person knowledge, task knowledge, and strategic knowledge. The section on metacognitive knowledge has 34 items in total, all designed on a five-point Likert scale. Each item is a statement concerning an aspect of metacognitive knowledge, accompanied with five response options ranging from five to one corresponding to from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”. For instance, “I think my English writing is good compared with my peers”. Learners were asked to judge every statement and select a choice that suits them best. Among all the items, items 1 to 14 are concerned with person knowledge, items 15 to 22 with task knowledge, and item 23 to 34 with strategic knowledge 3 . The internal reliability alpha reaches 0.89 for person knowledge, 0.81 for task knowledge, and 0.87 for strategic knowledge. To ensure that the participants fully understand the items so that their answers can best represent their true ideas, two versions of the same questionnaire were designed, with the Chinese one for the students and the English one for writing this paper. Zhang: Investigating the Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in English Writing 32 (2) English Writing To gather data on their English writing, the participants were required to write an English composition on the topic “Part-time Job” within thirty minutes during regular class time. The composition should be no less than 100 English words, following the writing practice of CET4 4 in China. “Part-time job” is a popular topic in universities in Mainland China and was thus chosen for writing so that the students would not feel too difficult and could display their English writing ability. (3) English Proficiency Test All the participants have just taken a College English test, along with the other freshmen, at the end of their first semester, which is also their first English test in university. The test consists of listening comprehension, vocabulary and grammar, reading comprehension, translation and writing, and has been graded by English teachers according to the same criteria 5 . This test was therefore adopted as the English proficiency test for our research, and the students’ scores were collected as an indicator of their current English proficiency. 3.3 Data Collection and Analyses Procedures The research was carried out at regular English teaching hours with the help of the participants’ teachers. For fear that the questionnaire might affect the students’ writing process, the English writing task was assigned first, followed by the metacognitive questionnaire. It took about 40 minutes for all the participants to complete the writing task and fill up the questionnaire. Each English composition was scored independently by two experienced English teachers, following the same grading criteria as in CET 4, with the full mark being 15 points. The inter-rater reliability is over 0.9. The average of the two scores for each composition was adopted as its final grade. Whenever the two scores of a composition disagreed by three points or above, the two raters would examine it Zhang: Investigating the Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in English Writing 33 again and reach a final agreement after consideration. As all the metacognitive knowledge items are on a five-point Likert scale, with the options ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”, the options were given values from 5 to 1 accordingly. The criteria for judging the average metacognitive knowledge level are shown in the following Table 1. Table 1: Grading criteria of metacognitive knowledge level Metacognitive knowledge level Mean Options 4.5-5.0 Strongly agree High 3.5-4.4 Agree Medium 2.5-3.4 Uncertain 1.5-2.4 Disagree Low 1.0-1.4 Strongly disagree All the data, including those of the writing performance, metacognitive knowledge and English proficiency, were typed into computer. SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science) programme was then run to undertake statistical analyses. To serve the purposes of the present study, the following analyses were carried out step by step: (1) descriptive analyses of each of the variables concerning metacognitive knowledge; (2) correlation analyses between the participants’ metacognitive knowledge and their English writing performance; (3) an independent-samples t-test of the English writing performance between students with different metacognitive knowledge statuses as well as an independent-samples t-test of the metacognitive knowledge status between students with different writing performance; (4) regression analyses for a close examination of the influence of metacognitive knowledge on English writing by controlling the English proficiency variable. 4. Results 4.1 Descriptive Analyses Table 2 presents the average score (Mean) and the standard deviation Zhang: Investigating the Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in English Writing 34 (Std. Deviation) of each intended aspect concerning metacognitive knowledge together with its corresponding item number in the questionnaire. Table 2: Descriptive statistics of each metacognitive knowledge variable Person Knowledge N Mean Std. Deviation 1. Positive attitudes towards English writing 120 3.14 1.08 2. Beliefs on English writing proficiency 120 2.85 .82 3. Beliefs on English writing achievement 120 4.05 .65 4. Beliefs on overcoming writing difficulties 120 3.55 .67 5. English writing motivation 120 3.36 1.09 6. Self-efficacy of ability in word spelling 120 2.68 .65 7. Self-efficacy of ability in using punctuations 120 3.18 .85 8. Self-efficacy of ability in using word class 120 2.82 .85 9. Self-efficacy of ability in using English grammar 120 2.95 .79 10. Self-efficacy of ability in writing topic sentences 120 3.68 .89 11. Self-efficacy of ability in writing supporting details 120 3.64 .79 12. Self-efficacy of ability in writing endings 120 3.45 .91 13. Self-efficacy of ability in thesis organization 120 3.32 .99 14. Self-efficacy of ability in expressing ideas 120 3.68 .78 Task Knowledge N Mean Std. Deviation 15. Familiarity with the writing topic 120 3.38 1.07 16. English writing task purpose 120 4.15 .73 17. Demands for a large vocabulary 120 2.82 .86 18. Demands for proficient grammar 120 2.68 .94 19. Demands for clear expression 120 3.95 1.06 20. Demands for good organization 120 3.75 .96 21. Demands for rich contents 120 3.60 .94 22. Demands for originality 120 3.20 1.16 Strategic Knowledge N Mean Std. Deviation 23. Knowledge on pre-writing planning 120 3.79 1.19 24. Thinking from readers' perspective 120 2.21 1.03 25. Knowledge on on-writing monitoring 120 3.74 1.07 26. Using avoidance strategies in writing exams 120 3.99 1.05 27. Seeking help in times of difficulty 120 2.07 .87 28. Knowledge on post-writing checking 120 3.42 1.04 29. Checking spelling 120 3.58 1.21 30. Checking grammar 120 3.64 1.09 31. Checking expression 120 2.15 .95 32. Checking organization 120 2.56 1.04 33.Checking content 120 2.76 .98 34.Knowledge on after-writing reflection 120 2.21 1.22 Table 3 summarizes the results of the three components of metacognitive knowledge and the overall metacognitive knowledge [...]... revise their compositions for improvement 6 Conclusion This paper explored the role of metacognitive knowledge in the English writing of Chinese EFL learners By analyzing the data collected from an English writing task and self-designed questionnaires on metacognitive knowledge, this study has obtained the following major findings: 43 Zhang: Investigating the Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in English Writing. .. knowledge in English writing The results of correlation and regression analyses demonstrate that metacognitive knowledge exerts positive influences not only on English writing, but also on English proficiency More specifically, the influence route chart obtained in the present study clearly 42 Zhang: Investigating the Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in English Writing indicates that metacognitive knowledge. .. to improve their English writing ability 5.3 The Influence of Metacognitive Knowledge on English Writing The results of the two independent-samples t-tests indicate that students with a higher English writing proficiency often have a stronger metacognitive knowledge base and that students with a better metacognitive knowledge status often have a higher English writing proficiency These findings suggest... average level of our students’ strategic knowledge is only 3.01, suggesting that our students, on the whole, have a relative poor knowledge about the use of writing strategies Although they have a fairly good awareness to 41 Zhang: Investigating the Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in English Writing plan their writing beforehand and monitor their writing process, they have little knowledge of thinking from... writing, metacognitive knowledge and English proficiency English Writing Metacognitive Knowledge English Writing 1 378(**) Metacognitive Knowledge 1 English Proficiency ** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed) English Proficiency 640(**) 361(**) 1 4.3 T-test Analyses To testify the influence of metacognitive knowledge on English writing, an independent-samples t-test of the English writing. .. average English writing grade (Mean=9.45) as the cut point Among 120 participants, 58 students whose writing is above or equal to the average have a mean metacognitive knowledge value of 3.31 while the other 62 students whose writing is below the average have a mean metacognitive knowledge value of 3.20 The difference between the metacognitive 36 Zhang: Investigating the Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in. .. level of our learners’ strategic knowledge 39 Zhang: Investigating the Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in English Writing In order to explore the causes for the students’ poor metacognitive knowledge in English writing, we undertook an informal interview with a few participants afterwards, in which some learners confess that， (1) “I have a lot of difficulties in expressing myself, so I don’t like writing. ..Zhang: Investigating the Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in English Writing status of the participants Table 3: Descriptive statistics of metacognitive knowledge Knowledge N Mean Std Deviation Person knowledge 120 3.31 82 Task knowledge 120 3.44 67 Strategic knowledge 120 3.01 74 Metacognitive knowledge 120 3.25 58 Table 4 presents the results of the writing performance and the English proficiency... follows: English Proficiency = 0.361 * Metacognitive Knowledge The above two equations demonstrate to us in accurate figures that metacognitive knowledge influences both English writing and English proficiency directly Moreover, metacognitive knowledge also exerts its influence on English writing indirectly by influencing English proficiency We therefore can draw the following route chart to show these influences... Chinese learners of English EFL learners from other first language backgrounds should also be examined to test the generalizability of the positive correlation between metacognitive knowledge and English writing found in this study In conclusion, a better command of metacognitive knowledge can empower learners in English writing and cultivate their autonomous 44 Zhang: Investigating the Role of Metacognitive . findings: Zhang: Investigating the Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in English Writing 44 (1) Chinese EFL learners’ metacognitive knowledge of. Third, the previous studies have seldom controlled the influence of English Zhang: Investigating the Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in English Writing