Đề tài Investigating the Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in English Writing

igher 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 that students’ metacognitive 
knowledge exerts positive influences on their English writing 
performance, consistent with previous research (e.g., Xu & Tang, 
2007). Through a qualitative analysis, Xu and Tang (2007) found that 
successful writers are superior to unsuccessful ones in the three 
components of and the overall metacognitive knowledge. The present 
study further testifies the important role of metacognitive 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 
Zhang: Investigating the Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in English Writing 
 43 
indicates that metacognitive knowledge exerts an indirect positive 
influence through English proficiency as well as a direct positive 
influence, on English writing performance. 
It should be emphasized that metacognitive knowledge also plays an 
important role in English learning. This finding is in line with earlier 
studies that metacognitive knowledge helps facilitate English learning 
in general. We therefore conclude that developing students’ 
metacognitive knowledge can help increase their English proficiency, 
including English writing skills. 
It is well known that developing English writing competence presents 
a great challenge to ESL/EFL learners and falling behind required 
levels for writing proficiency may hinder them from normal study 
(Kasper, 1997). English writing has also been a notoriously difficult 
skill for Chinese learners of English. Therefore, the facilitating effects 
of metacognitive knowledge on writing can be fully exploited to help 
ESL/EFL students. Educators should include the instruction of 
metacognitive knowledge as a component of teaching programs (e.g., 
Chamot & O’Malley, 1994; Cohen, 1998; Holec, 1994). Specifically, 
teachers of English can design activities to help increase students’ 
motivation and self-efficacy in writing, namely, to improve their 
person knowledge. Teachers can also provide instruction in the use of 
cognitive and metacognitive strategies to strengthen students’ strategic 
knowledge and skills for autonomous learning. Moreover, it is 
important to raise students’ awareness of the specific strategies that 
can be employed in the writing process, such as to think from readers’ 
perspectives, to reflect upon their writing, and to 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: 
Zhang: Investigating the Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in English Writing 
 44 
(1) Chinese EFL learners’ metacognitive knowledge of English 
 writing, on average, is not satisfactory. 
(2) There is a positive and significant correlation between 
 metacognitive knowledge and English writing. 
(3) Metacognitive knowledge influences students’ English writing; 
 developing students’ metacognitive knowledge helps increase their 
 writing proficiency. 
The present study has several important pedagogical implications. As 
Chinese EFL learners, on the whole, don’t have a high metacognitive 
knowledge status, there is an urgent need to raise the learners’ 
metacognitive awareness to facilitate their English writing skill. Since 
metacognitive knowledge correlates significantly and positively with 
English writing, it is necessary for teachers to provide instructions to 
cultivate learners’ metacognitive knowledge in English class. 
Metacognitive knowledge has been found to exert positive influences 
not only on English writing, but also on English proficiency. 
Therefore, offering metacognitive knowledge instruction, especially 
strategic knowledge, can also help to increase EFL learners’ overall 
English proficiency. 
This study suffers from several drawbacks. First, metacognitive 
knowledge may increase with appropriate instruction; therefore, 
longitudinal as well as cross-sectional studies need to be carried out to 
investigate the metacognitive growth of EFL learners. Second, the 
major instrument for collecting metacognitive knowledge data was 
questionnaire in this research. Other methods, such as “Think-aloud”, 
can be adopted to gather learners’ introspective as well as 
retrospective data. Third, the participants of the present study are 
exclusively 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 
Zhang: Investigating the Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in English Writing 
 45 
English learning. The limitations of the present study suggest the 
direction for further research in future. 
Notes 
1. The study has been supported by National Funds for Social Science (“Study of the 
Development of Chinese Students’ Genre Competence”, Project No.:10BYY088), by 
“Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities” (Post-70s Young Scholar 
Research Funds at Wuhan University) and Doctor Research Funds of Wuhan University 
(Project No.: 102276369). 
2. Non-English major students in Mainland China are usually offered one English course, 
called College English, in the first two years at university. 
3. Interested readers may refer to Table 2 for the detailed information on the intended aspects 
of metacognitive knowledge and their corresponding item numbers in the questionnaire. 
4. CET4, namely, College English Test, Band 4, is a national English proficiency test for 
non-English major students in Mainland China. Its reliability and validity has long been 
established by researchers, and this test has been widely used in research as a benchmark test. 
5. The teachers are said to have marked the test papers together and each was responsible for 
certain items. 
6. The full mark for the English proficiency test is 100. 
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About the author 
Zhang Yanyan is currently an associate professor at the School of Foreign Languages and 
Literature at Wuhan University in P. R. China. Her research interests mainly include second 
language acquisition, applied linguistics, corpus linguistics and world Englishes. 
E-mail: lucyzhangyy@163.com