Abstract
Abstract: This study examined the relationship between metacognitive revision and writing achievement. Since American students often have had little strategic writing instruction in high school, they frequently come to college as non-proficient writers. By focusing on self-improvement rather than agonizing over the quality of the final product, struggling writers’ fears and lack of confidence can be mitigated, allowing growth. Requiring students to revise their essays and explain these revisions may influence the likelihood of completing the stages of the writing process, including using feedback. Results indicated that students who received high scores in revision explanations often received higher scores on the final essays than their peers. Additionally, from the pre- to post-intervention attitudinal survey, student responses showed more positive feelings about writing, increased confidence in ability and self-efficacy, and greater interest in providing feedback to classmates. Despite these gains, fewer students at the end of the semester felt that feedback, revision and reflection affected their writing performance, suggesting feelings of frustration at the multi-faceted process.
Highlights
Students know that they should revise their writing, but they often stick to surface-level changes, failing to take advantage of feedback from their peers and instructor
In 2011, the last year for which NAEP released writing assessment data, only 24% of twelfth grade students were rated as proficient writers, while 73% scored at basic or below basic levels; 3% performed at advanced levels (National Center for Education Statistics, 2012)
Schunn, and Correnti (2016) studied students’ rates of making changes as well as the quality of those revisions following feedback, and they discovered that the probability of whether or not students would revise was affected by the type of feedback given
Summary
Students know that they should revise their writing, but they often stick to surface-level changes, failing to take advantage of feedback from their peers and instructor. Instructors fret over the lack of alteration that occurs from rough to final draft, especially when they have engaged with the students in offering written and/or oral feedback, yet students often fail to implement changes due to their own feelings of frustration or being overwhelmed (Lee, 2011) Even when they acknowledge their deficiencies in writing and state that they want to improve, students often do not follow through with revision (Achen, 2018). Strong writers may automatically apply metacognitive strategies to their writing process, but non-proficient writers often lack these skills (Berninger & Swanson, 1994) These studies suggest that educators’ best efforts at helping students improve their writing are often ignored, requiring a need for an alternative approach, one where students are tasked to think critically about their revision process in response to well-crafted feedback. In order to increase confidence in writing and advance writing achievement while decreasing the fear of failure, the present study implemented a metacognitive revision framework where students were required to articulate their metacognitive strategies as they revised their writing
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