The Effects of Applying Metacognitive Knowledge and Strategies to a Senior High School English Writing Program.doc

the effects of applying metacognitive knowledge and strategies to a senior high school english writing program: an action research via the intelligent web-based interactive language learning (iwill) platformintroductionthis action research is a pilot study aiming to design an english writing training program to improve the writing strategy use of the students low in english writing ability in national chung hsing senior high school (chsh). through investigating the effects of integrating metacognitive knowledge and strategies into the course design, the research attempts to constitute a metacognitive knowledge base that students need in order to effectively achieve the purpose of writing.in chapter one, the background to the research is addressed. firstly, the present writing instruction in national chung hsing senior high school is stated. some problems in the writing instruction within our school are identified. in the second section, the role of metacognitive knowledge and strategies in english writing instruction is explored. with the attempt to promote integrating the findings of the metacognitive theory into writing instruction, the researchers explicate the notion of metacognition and the important role it plays in writing instruction. the intelligent web-based interactive language learning (iwill) platform is introduced in the following section. as the research is a new attempt to incorporate a web-based language learning platform and metacognition theories into senior high school english writing instruction, the significance as well as the limitations of this action research are stated in the concluding parts of the first chapter.chapter two concerns mainly the theory part. in this chapter, we have proposed the possible metacognitive skills involved in writing in general, and some possible metacognitive strategies associated with the skills. through literature review, the researchers explore the possibility of using an action research to improve english writing instruction. the use of online writing tools to assist english writing instruction is also investigated. the third and fourth sections in this chapter focus on the theoretical dimension of metacognition. in these two parts, many current issues of metacognition are presented. based on the concepts and recent studies, the adoption of metacognitive knowledge and strategies to english writing instruction is fostered and discussed. chapter three is about the research. in the first section, the methodology is introduced with subjects, instruments and course development described. in the second section, data collection and discussion are presented. the instruments used in the study are two questionnaires, an open-ended survey, an introspective interview and two motivation surveys (pre- and post- tests). to analyze the data collected, in chapter four, the qualitative and quantitative analyses of the data are stated. several prominent findings and results are derived from data analyses. based on these findings and results, in conclusion, some implications as well as recommendations are presented for the current english writing curricula within senior high schools and for teachers who are interested in applying the findings of the theory of metacognition to english writing instruction.chapter one: background to the researchthe writing process can be viewed as a cognitive activity (flower & hayes, 1981). in the process of writing, writers have to apply specific knowledge they have acquired (mostly associated with the topic and some rhetoric conventions about it), set goals and plans, monitor and evaluate the way they compose their works, and revise by detecting any flaws or errors that might be in the written texts. obviously, underlying the use of knowledge and strategies are a number of component processes that interact. no wonder writing instruction as well as learning is often regarded as a great challenge to both instructors and learners.in order to have a better understanding of how writers reflect upon and monitor their cognitive activities, in the recent decade, researchers have attempted to apply the findings of the theory of metacognition to english writing instruction. through investigating the processes some skilled as well as less skilled writers undergo, many writing researchers among others conclude that enhancing learners self-awareness of their cognitive activities during writing does improve their writing performance. based on the previous studies, this research is a further attempt on integrating metacognition into an english writing program, this time, _the researchers and their studies that conclude enhancing learners metacognitive models can assist them to become better language learners are hartman, 2001; kasper, 1997; sitko, 1998; devine, 1993; victori, 1999; you and joe, 2001, 2002, 2003, to name just a few. by far, the notion of metacognition that can assist both instructors and learners to strategically regulate how they teach and learn english writing is gaining more and more approval among researchers. 9at the senior high school level. in the following sections, therefore, the researchers will first state the present writing instruction in national chung hsing senior high school (chsh), which has been assigned as the regional core school in cooperation with the iwill research team since 2003. 1.1 the present writing instruction in national chung hsing senior high school in english as a second or foreign language (esl/efl) fields, most instructors might agree that english writing course is the least rewarding to the teachers and the most challenging or even frustrating to the learners. many factors might contribute to this phenomenon. take the writing instruction in national chung hsing senior high school for example. its not until the third grade that the students start to learn how to compose english essays in accordance with the school curriculum. on the teachers part, since the goal is set for passing the coming entrance exam, writing instruction is often drawn to teach some skills such as grammar, vocabulary and sentence patterns besides some writing expertise. within the limited hours of writing classes (usually 2 hours a week), and big _as huang and cheng indicate, “in taiwan, although researchers paid much attention to language learning strategies in the recent decade, a paucity of studies focused on learning strategy trainings, very few were related to strategy training at the senior high school levelprevious studies (cf. huang, 1997) showed that senior high school students generally did not use learning strategies to help their learning, which might have made the increased learning load more difficult, and indirectly hindered students interests in learning english” (2002: p.360).iwill stands for “intelligent web-based interactive language learning.” see and wible et al., (2001) for more information about this web-based language learning platform. test id: chsheaster password: 0819class size (often more than 40 students in a class), the teachers seem to be burdened forever with the errors of grammar, words and sentences. as for the students, making little progress with painstaking efforts often drives them to learn from sample writings by copying the text structure and rhetoric patterns in them. as observed by the researchers, some problems in the writing instruction in chsh are identified. on the one hand, writing class turns to be mechanical as the instruction focus is on grammar, patterns or providing students with collections of model essays. since less attention is paid to the writing process, students are rarely given the opportunity for discussion or for a post-writing classroom session for evaluation and correction of their written texts. on the other hand, due to the shortage of classroom hours and the big size of class, teachers are usually refrained from assigning enough homework for learners to practice, not to mention conducting individual interview with students, which is believed to be one of the most effective strategies for efl writing instruction (you and joe, 2003: p.626). the writing instruction in chsh, in this regard, seems to have to undergo a great change. besides making some adjustments to the writing curriculum, the instructors should also switch the instruction focus from a product-oriented approach to a process-oriented or a more communicative one. _its not uncommon for senior high school teachers to be bombarded with some clich expressions as “it goes without saying that ,” “im firmly convinced that ,” to name just a few. as huang and tzeng point out, to improve writing, students are commonly reported to “read a lot to imitate others writing styles and their word choices so as to create the sense of writing” (2000: p.371). in certain cases, some beginning writers even consider second language (l2) composing as translation, that is, they plan in their mind in first language (l1) and make use of their grammatical knowledge of l2 to translate their ideas into l2 (you and joe, 1999: p.186).1.2 the role of metacognitive knowledge and strategies in english writing instruction students achieve a better academic performance and higher self-concept when the metacognitive process has been developed through planning, monitoring, and regulating. in other words, when a teacher successfully model a variety of appropriate learning strategies, students will increase their self-regulation and develop an awareness of their own cognitive processes.(cited in chen, 2003: p.338 ) from 1990s, researchers have started promoting to integrate the findings of the metacognitive theory into writing instruction (you & joe, 1999, 2000). among the researches is devines study in 1993, which attempts to explicate the notion of metacognition and the important role it plays in writing instruction. in that study, devine claims that writing instruction should switch its focus from the product to the process. that is, both the instructor and the learner writers should revisit the writing activities from a metacognitive perspective. by investigating the learner writers writing process, an instructor can better understand the cognitive process the learner writers undergo, the writing strategies they adopt, the writing skills they develop in the process of composing their articles and thus assist the learners to perform their writing jobs well. learner writers, likewise, should have a better understanding and control of their own writing processes so as to detect and diagnose problems in their written texts. simply put, a process and strategy based writing instruction is gaining its importance as instructors now are confronted with an integral role in teaching learners how to reflect on their own writing process as well as designing courses to strengthen learner writers metacognitive models.1.3 integrating the intelligent web-based interactive language learning (iwill) platform into an english writing program while the researchers were reflecting upon how to provide students with direct and step-by-step instruction on metacognitive strategic knowledge, and emphasize the importance of integrating metacognition into the existing school curriculum and objectives, a series of workshops held by the iwill team caught the researchers attention. this web-based language platform consists of several tightly interwoven components which aim to provide both english instructors and learners a language learning environment to interact with each other online. of all its functions, the online writing environment is especially appealing to the researchers as it by far meets the researchers need to develop the students writing performance by means of enhancing their metacognitive models. through the platform, students turn in their writing assignments on line, and teachers correct them on line as well. a bank of frequently used comments is provided for teachers so they can mark essays with the click of a mouse. whats better, all comments that a teacher gives to each student are archived. at any time, the student or teacher can retrieve a complete display of every piece of teacher feedback in the context of the piece of student writing where it was given. the display is cumulative over all the writing the student has turned in, providing an instant writing profile at a glance. as the comments stored in the “comment bank” database (this icon appears on teachers interface only) can be decided and modified by instructors, teachers can thus choose to give students detailed corrections or just offer them the direction of their mistakes. thus, to encourage students to question and monitor their own written products, it seems useful for the instructors to make good use of this tool to develop learners corrective actions and compensatory strategies for further improvement. in addition to “comment bank,” the “feedback profile” and “comment list” on both instructors and students interfaces contribute to metacognitive instruction and learning as well. through these two icons, the error types that students have made before can be traced. with the knowledge of their error types, students may be more metacognitively aware of their composing activities. to make the writing course more appealing to the students and to integrate the writing programs into coherent learning units, the researchers have also tried to bring together other functions on the iwill platform to the course design. “authoring tools,” for example, are used to incorporate the selection and annotation of readings, selection of video segments, insertion of discussion board, contextualized writing assignment, and so forth. other functions, like “collocation explorer” and “word spider” are also introduced to students for their further exploration._for more detailed information about the iwill platform and the functions related, please refer to appendix i: an introduction on iwill.1.4 significance of the research as huang and cheng point out, “in taiwan, although researchers paid much attention to language learning strategies in the recent decade, a paucity of studies focused on learning strategy trainings, very few were related to strategy training at the senior high school level” (2002: p.360). this research is thus an attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of applying a strategy training approach to a senior high school writing program. through fostering the use of metacognitive knowledge and strategies, the researchers hope to train the student learners in chsh to utilize the knowledge and strategies in their writing activities. besides offering learners the techniques needed to be more skillful in writing, the researchers are also in the hope that after several times of strategy modeling, a workable syllabus design as well as some suggestions can be offered to other instructors at senior high school levels. aside from what mentioned above, this research is also a new attempt to incorporate a web-based language learning platform into senior high school english writing instruction. as wible states, “one of the major advantages of web-based learning platforms is the rich, centralized repositories of data about user behavior that can be accumulated when these userswhether learners or educators or bothinteract over a web-based system” (2003: p.90). namely, with the assistance of the web-based learning platform, the researchers hope to know users writing behaviors better. through the cumulative display of the writing profiles, furthermore, the researchers would investigate how important the role a web-based language learning platform plays in cultivating student learners metacognitive models.1.5 research questions the action research aims to answer the following questions: 1. can metacognitive knowledge or strategies be taught or instructed? if yes, does the instruction of metacognitive knowledge and strategies promote individuals to plan, proceed and monitor their learning in a way that directly improves their writing performance? 2. will a web-based learning platform be a beneficial tool in cultivating students metacognitive models?3. will my students in the writing workshop develop their own metacognitive strategies? if yes, what are the strategies? how will the learner writers make use of it? and when or in what condition would they develop them?4. are metacognitively aware learners more strategic and perform better writing jobs than unaware learners? if yes, what differences do they make?1.6 limitations of the researchas claimed in the above section, the research attempts to answer four questions involved in the application of metacognitive knowledge and strategies to a senior high school english writing program. in addition to the four, one more question concerning why learner writers use a given strategy while composing in english remains unexplored in the research. the main reason why this question is not taken into consideration in this research report is the researchers second thought on the scope of the research. according to you and joes study in 2003: metacognitive instruction needs to be an integral part of the instructional objectives and to be taught over an entire school year. the most effective way for efl writing teachers to teach their students to become metacognitive learners probably is to allow metacognitive instruction to permeate their curriculum” (p.634). owing to the limitation of the research span (about one