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A QUALITATIVE INVESTIGATION OF METACOGNITIVE STRATEGIES USED
BY THAI STUDENTS IN THEIR ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE WRITING
Background
of the Study
Writing is important in one's personal life. As a medium for communication,
writing is a critical skill for everyone to have for success in life. In the workplace, the
importance of good writing skills is evident because any profession or job requires some
kind of communication in writing. Being able to write well enables one to gain success
and get ahead of others (National Commission on Writing for America's Families,
Schools, and Colleges, 2004).
With the spread of globalization, writing now appears to be the most essential
among the four English language skills for Thai students. E-business opens up more
opportunities for Thai business people to do businesses and communicate with their
business partners or clients overseas, of course by using English as a business lingua
franca. In the field of education, more opportunities are available for students to further
their study in English speaking countries than in the past. Even though they do not go
abroad, students can take courses or enroll in a study program offered by foreign
universities via E-Iearning/online universities. Success in all these efforts cannot be
attained without good English writing skills.
The great interest in American basic writers and the abundance of research on
writing in the 1980s evidence clearly the fact that it is difficult even for native speakers of
English to write well. Naturally, for. English as a Second or Foreign Language
(ESLIEFL) students, the cognitive activity of writing in English must be even more
complicated and much harder because of the interference from their first language (L 1)
rhetoric and, in many cases, the inhibition of their English language proficiency.
Metacognition refers to the process of thinking or the ability to think about one's
own thinking. To put it more specifically, it refers to the ability to reflect on, understand,
and control the cognitive process in which a person is engaged in his/her learning or any
mental activity (Schraw & Dennison, 1994).
It is clear from these definitions that metacognition is central to all human learning.
This has direct applications in the field of education, including English language
instruction, and therefore there has been a good deal of research on this topic.
In terms of writing, metacognition plays an active role in a person's writing process
as well. According to Torrence (2007), writing expertise evolves through: (a) knowledge
about text formation, from grapheme-phoneme representation to conventions of how full
text is structured, (b) metacognitive strategies to manage one's writing processes, and (c)
effective use of working memory resources. While the three faculties interact closely
during writing, Torrence stresses that metacognitive strategies 'are dominant in tracking
that appropriate knowledge is used when needed so as to reduce working memory load.
Recent research on the relationship between metacognition and writing performance
(e.g., Devine, 1993; Englert, 2001; Kasper, 1997;) confirms this view. Besides, these
studies point to the same direction: that effective teaching of writing should be grounded
on an understanding of students' metacognitive knowledge and strategies.
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Statement of the Problem
In contrast to the extensive literature on both first language (L 1) and second
language (L2) writing, writing development of Thai students is poorly understood
although writing has been identified by Thai students as the most serious problem in their
English language learning (Pawapatcharaudom, 2007; Pinyosunun, 2005). Thus, there is
a need for more studies that explore the English writing strategies used by Thai students.
However, the researcher found only limited qualitative research studies investigating
Thai university students' metacognitive strategies in their English writing. Therefore, the
present study aimed to address this topic to complement what existing research has
found, and the purpose of the study was to investigate English as a foreign language
(EFL) students' metacognitive strategies, specifically examining the metacognitive
strategies used by six Thai undergraduate students in their academic English writing.
Research Questions
1.
2.
This study was undertaken to address two research questions:
What metacognitive strategies do Thai students use in their English writing?
How do they use these strategies?
Significance of the Study
The findings from this study would provide information about the metacognitive
strategies used by Thai students in their EFL academic writing. This preliminary
information is crucial for teachers and educators because it will tell them what the
students already know, what they do when they write, and where the students currently
are in their learning process of English writing, thereby providing teachers and educators
with a better understanding of the cognitive development of the students' metacognition
and writing. Equipped with this information, teachers and educators could more
appropriately and more constructively find instructional strategies or ways to help
students develop their writing skills further. When combined with findings from other
studies on Thai EFL students, the information from this study may also point to
directions for further studies that would add on and advance research on the writing of
Thai EFL students.
Literature Review
A Brief History of the Teaching of English Writing
In the 1950s, during the heyday of the grammar-translation method, writing
assumed a rather inferior role in the teaching and learning of English and other
languages. Although it was considered a skill as important as reading, writing received
relatively little or no systematic attention because the emphasis of teaching was only on
writing "sample sentences, sometimes with the use of parallel bil ingual texts and
dialogues" (Richards and Rodgers, 1986, p.2), and students were left on their own in their
struggle to write/produce good pros~.
With the rise of audiolingualism in the 1960s, the situation became grimmer. In
Lally's (2000) words, the audio-lingual method almost brought L2 writing to its downfall
because writing was "the fourth-the
least and the last" (Cooper and Morian, 1980, p.
411, as cited in Lally, 2000) among the four skills taught. Because speech was viewed as
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primary, writing was given a subservient role, that of reinforcing the language patterns
practiced orally. As Richards and Rodgers (1986) stated, writing was "purely imitative,"
involving "little more than copying out sentences that have been practiced" (pp. 58-59).
As they became more proficient, students were allowed to practice variations ofthe
grammatical structures they had practiced through substitution, transformation, and
completion drills. Thus, it was obvious that most writing exercises were limited to the
word- and the sentence-levels.
The advent of the communicative approach to language teaching in the mid 1970s
marginalized L2 writing further. The approach focused mainly on oral communication
skills; therefore, less time was devoted to the teaching of writing, which carried on the
tradition of the audio-lingual method and centered around contextualized practice of
previously studied grammatical rules or forms. Emphasis was placed on the written
product and grammatical correctness, and writing was taught systematically and
prescriptively. Students practiced writing in the form of controlled composition tasks or
guided writing, and models of good essays were provided for students to analyze and
imitate. As described by Flower and Hayes (1981), writing instruction was based on the
stage process model, which identified the composing process as a linear series of three
core stages-pre-writing,
writing, and re-writing. Students were taught to assume a strict
progression through these activities. However, as some researchers have criticized, this
traditional, product-oriented approach to L2 writing instruction did not involve real
writing (Richards, 1990), and the complexity of writing was overlooked (Zamel, 1980, as
cited in Raimes, 1991).
Metacognition
Metacognition is often defined simply as thinking about thinking, which means that
it is the process of thinking or the ability to think about one's own thinking. To put it
more specifically, it refers to the ability to reflect on, understand, and control the
cognitive process in which a person is engaged in his/her learning or any mental activity
(Schraw & Dennison, 1994). Because it is the process that involves a person's active
control over his/her process of thinking that he/she uses in any learning situation,
metacognition is fundamental to all human learning and intelligent activities, and it is
therefore considered by language educators and those in other academic fields as critical
to a person's learning.
Metacognitive Strategies in Writing
In Oxford's (1990) classification scheme of learn ing strategies, metacognitive
strategies are put in the same group with affective and social strategies and are classified
as indirect strategies, in contrast to memory, cognitive, and compensation strategies,
which are grouped as direct ones. Metacognitive strategies are defined as the executive
strategies employed by learners to plan, monitor, and evaluate their performance of
learning tasks to direct their own learning. Three sets of metacognitive strategies are
identified: centering your learning, arranging and planning your learning, and evaluating
your learning.
According to O'Malley and Charnot's (1990) classification, seven types of
metacognitive strategies include: (a) Planning, (b) Directed Attention, (c) Selective
Attention, (d) Self-Management, (e) Self-monitoring, (f) Problem identification, and (g)