Facilitating metacognitive processes of academic genre-based writing using an online writing system

Abstract

Few studies have investigated how metacognitive processes foster the application of genre knowledge to students’ academic writing. This is largely due to its internal and unobservable characteristics. To bridge this gap, an online writing system based on metacognition, involving the stages of planning, monitoring, evaluating, and revising, was developed to investigate how such a system contributed to the understanding and application of genre knowledge to students’ academic writing. The data included three different versions of each student's written research proposal, action logs, discussion transcripts in discussion forums, and an open-ended questionnaire. Descriptive statistics, a typical case sampling, and the constant comparison method were used to analyze the data. The results suggested that the students made greater improvements in academic writing performance after experiencing metacognitive processes. Particularly, collaborative efforts throughout the metacognitive processes were important in supporting students to understand the academic genre, recognize the problems of unstructured academic papers, and apply genre knowledge to academic writing. The online writing system features, designed to nurture students’ metacognitive processes, served as useful cognitive stimuli to raise students’ metacognitive awareness. The system's functions overcame the limitations of observing students’ metacognitive processes described in previous studies, and enabled teachers to provide follow-up instruction. Implications and recommendations are also addressed.

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