The role of metacognition and motivation in developing the writing skill

Abstract

Most university students consider the writing skill as a hard task, a challenging skill to master all its components and produce acceptable essays. This study seeks to explore the efficiency of implementing metacognitive strategies via the use of the Process Approach in English Foreign Language writing classes to develop the students’ written production and to make the learners aware of the importance of the use of metacognitive strategies through the writing process. This study is a fulfillment of the urgent need to make Second Year students at the department of English, university “Frères Mentouri “,Constantine 1 aware of some metacognitive strategies that facilitate the writing task. We hypothesize that if the students use the process approach as metacognitive strategies while writing, they will develop their writing skill. If the students receive explicit metacognitive instruction as strategies to write essays, they will improve their writing performance. And if teachers manage to motivate their students and use metacognitive instruction while teaching, they will help them to improve their writing level. In order to confirm or reject the hypotheses, two main tools are used which are the teachers and the students questionnaires, and a quasi- experimental research (pre-test and post-test). The experimental study lasted eight weeks. During this time, the researchers used metacognitive strategies and taught the participants in the experimental group how to use them in their writing skill. Through this study, the present researcher has attempted to create a motivating environment and aid the learners to write essays following the different recursive stages of the process approach as a metacognitive strategy. However, the participants in the control group did not receive any treatment during their writing practice. The results show that the written compositions of the experimental group are highly improved compared to the control group. The findings gathered in this study confirmed the set hypothesis in that the difficulties students face in writing essays can be avoided, and effective production can be achieved if they are made aware of the importance of metacognition and of using strategies during the whole process of writing.