Writing Strategy Instruction Research Articles

Integrating large language models into EFL writing instruction: effects on performance, self-regulated learning strategies, and motivation

This study aimed to investigate the efficacy of utilizing large language models (LLMs) to enhance self-regulated learning (SRL) strategy instruction in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing. An LLM-supported Cognitive Academic Language Learning Model (CALLA-LLM) was developed and examined for its potential to improve elementary students’ EFL writing performance, SRL strategy use, and writing motivation. In a randomized controlled trial, 65 elementary school students were divided into an experimental group receiving CALLA-LLM instruction and a control group receiving traditional CALLA instruction. Both groups learned SRL strategies over 5 weeks, with data collected pre-intervention, post-intervention, and at a one-month follow-up. Results showed that the CALLA-LLM group made significant improvements in writing performance, SRL strategy use, and writing motivation, maintained most of the gains at follow-up, and significantly outperformed the control group. Findings provide empirical evidence for the efficacy of the CALLA-LLM model in enhancing EFL writing strategy instruction, lending support for integrating AI technologies such as LLMs into English language teaching. Moreover, the study underscores the importance of the “Humans in the Loop” approach, which emphasizes the essential role of human educators in AI-assisted language instruction.

Metacognitive Writing Strategy Instruction in the EFL Context: Focus on Writing Performance and Motivation

In this study, an explanatory sequential design was utilized to examine the impact of strategy-based instruction (SBI) on the writing performance and motivation of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in a writing course. A total of 50 Chinese EFL students were selected from two intact classes and were randomly assigned to either the control group ( n = 24) or the experimental group ( n = 26). The experimental group received a sixteen-week metacognition training program integrated into the writing course, while the control group was provided with conventional writing instruction. Data collection was performed through timed writing tasks, a second language writing motivation scale, and semi-structured interviews. The results indicated that the experimental group exhibited a significant improvement in both writing performance and motivation, in comparison to the control group. This study provides empirical evidence for the benefits of SBI in promoting students’ writing competency and motivation. The findings have important implications for researchers and educators in the field of EFL writing instruction.

Fostering philosophy teachers' disciplinary writing practice: A multiple-case design study

In this design study, we designed an instructional unit open to contextual modifications with the aim of fostering secondary school students' philosophical writing. Three philosophy teachers developed innovative source-based writing tasks and provided discipline-specific writing strategy instruction in their 10th grade class. In this study, we focused on change. We explored teachers' interaction with the instructional design and studied teachers' views on how the intervention had changed their practice since a change of beliefs is crucial to successful, durable innovation of teaching. Moreover, we studied the effects of the changed practice, by exploring change in students' writing. An external jury analyzed students' texts to determine students' actual learning achievements. Teachers' insights into student progress were obtained from reflective interviews that featured comparisons between the observed and expected results. The results showed that teachers judged the design to be feasible, valid, and effective for students' philosophical writing development. After the intervention, students' texts showed similar or even more independent philosophical thinking than before, while the tasks became more complex. Implementation drove teachers to contemplate writing instruction, indicating a change in their belief system, which is necessary for genuine improvement in teacher practice.

Aligning an Editing and Revising Writing Strategy to Technology Supports for Students With Learning Disabilities

Editing and revising is a necessary, yet complex, stage of the writing process that is challenging for students with and without disabilities. One solution to improve overall writing outcomes is with strategy instruction, such as the Strategic Instruction Model for writing. More specifically, strategies such as the Error Monitoring Strategy, that support editing and revising. Additionally, with the increase in access to devices, and the continued development of tools that support writing, these strategies should be aligned to technologies to further support students with learning disabilities and other struggling writers. Simply providing teaching strategies to students and providing them with devices is not enough to improve writing outcomes. Rather, explicit instruction in the strategy and the tool, along with how to use them together, is necessary.The purpose of this article is to offer an example of how educators can combine effective writing strategy instruction with readily and easily available technology tools to support the needs of students who struggle with writing.

The Impact of Scaffolded Metacognitive Writing Strategy Instruction on Iranian Intermediate EFL Learners’ IELTS Writing Task 2

According to research findings, metacognition has been shown to have an essential role in education. As individuals are different,6 metacognitive knowledge cannot be the same for all learners. Learners need to be trained to improve their metacognition. Given this, the current study has examined the influence of scaffolding awareness and the use of metacognitive strategies during a strategy instruction program on the performance of Iranian EFL learners on IELTS writing task 2. To achieve this aim, using the Oxford Quick Placement Test (OQPT), eighty intermediate EFL learners (males and females) were selected from among 100 learners. They were randomly assigned to two groups of forty participants each as control and experimental groups. To benchmark the participants’ writing skills, an IELTS writing task 2 question was administered as the pretest. The experimental group received scaffolded metacognitive strategy instruction in their writing practices for four weeks, with 6 hours per week. The control group was instructed in traditional writing practices. The purpose was to promote the metacognitive awareness of the experimental group in performing the writing task. At the end of the treatment, another IELTS writing task 2 question was assigned as the posttest to measure the participants’ gain due to the treatment application. The independent and paired samples t-tests indicated that scaffolded metacognitive instruction effectively improved learners’ metacognitive awareness, which led to their improvement in writing skills. There was not any significant difference between males and females’ posttest mean scores.

Strategy Uptake in Writing Pal: Adaptive Feedback and Instruction

The present study examined the extent to which adaptive feedback and just-in-time writing strategy instruction improved the quality of high school students’ persuasive essays in the context of the Writing Pal (W-Pal). W-Pal is a technology-based writing tool that integrates automated writing evaluation into an intelligent tutoring system. Students wrote a pretest essay, engaged with W-Pal’s adaptive instruction over the course of four training sessions, and then completed a posttest essay. For each training session, W-Pal differentiated strategy instruction for each student based on specific weaknesses in the initial training essays prior to providing the opportunity to revise. The results indicated that essay quality improved overall from pretest to posttest with respect to holistic quality, as well as several specific dimensions of essay quality, particularly for students with lower literacy skills. Moreover, students’ scores on some of the training essays improved from the initial to revised version on the dimensions of essay quality that were targeted by instruction, whereas scores did not improve on the dimensions that were not targeted by instruction. Overall, the results suggest that W-Pal’s adaptive strategy instruction can improve the quality of students’ essays overall, as well as more specific dimensions of essay quality.

The Applying of Cognitive Strategy Instruction in Writing (CSIW) To Increase the students’ Writing Abilities

This research is based on students' problems related to learning English, especially writing English. this is due to the very poor quality of their writing. therefore, the purpose of this study was to find out whether the use of strategy CSIW in learning English can help improve students' writing skills in class X TITL B SMK Negeri 2 Parepare.
 The researcher applied a pre-experimental method using a one-group pre-test and post-test design, using the sample X TITL B, which consisted of 36 students from SMK Negeri 2 Parepare by using cluster sampling of 72 students from the population.
 The results of the data analysis showed that the students' writing ability increased significantly. This is indicated by the average score of students from the pre-test results (48.77) and the average score of students from the post-test is 80.03. This indicated that the writing ability of students in class X TITL B at SMK Negeri 2 Parepare has progressed by the use of the strategy CSIW to improve students' descriptive writing skills. This is proved by the t-test value (3.11) which is higher than the t-table value (1.689).

The Effects of Writing Strategy Instruction on EFL Learners’ Writing Development

This study examined the effects of integrating writing strategy training into EFL writing instruction on learners’ strategy use and writing performance. Two classes of EFL adult learners participated in this study. The experimental group were instructed with the writing strategy training in their EFL writing class for 14 weeks, whereas the control group received the same EFL writing program without any explicit strategy training. 
 Mixed methods were applied in collecting data. The quantitative instruments included the writing strategy questionnaires and writing performance tests, which were both pre-tested and post-tested in the both groups. The qualitative instruments of reflective journals were also conducted in the experimental group to probe deeper insights into learners’ strategy changes. The findings showed that there were significantly positive differences in learners’ using writing strategies and in writing proficiency favoring the experimental group. 
 The findings of this study indicate that writing strategy training can be integrated in the EFL writing instruction, and can bring to positive impacts for learners’ strategic awareness and writing strategy use as well as their writing performance. The paper suggested the strong need to the process-based writing instruction, and writing strategy training holds promise in this regard.

Teaching writing strategies with tiered supports for middle school students with and without special needs: a case study

The effect of writing strategy instruction on three middle school students’ narrative writing performance in actual classrooms was investigated. The results indicated that the writing strategy instruction improved writing performance of students with and without disabilities, as well as students who were English language learners when provided with tiered supports. Future research is needed on faculty development on writing strategy instruction and the implementation of other evidence-based writing instruction.

Impact of Writing Strategy Instruction on the Writing Performance of Undergraduate EAP Learners in Pakistan

Second language writing research reveals learners performing poorly on writing tasks because of inadequate writing development resulting from ineffective writing instruction. This scenario prevails at the local higher education where the students are under prepared in academic English, which poses a challenge to them in coping with their studies; and English language teachers, are challenged to equip these students with the academic writing skills. This prompted the authors to plan a pedagogical intervention which is reported here. The study investigated the impact of explicit writing strategy instruction on the writing performance of 40 undergraduate students enrolled in English for academic purposes (EAP) course at a university in Pakistan. Employing the positivist paradigm and quantitative approach, a single group quasi-experimental study with an intact group of students was carried out. Participants’ choice of writing strategies (WS) (cognitive, metacognitive and social) for the writing process (pre-writing, drafting and reviewing) using a 5-point Likert scale, and a writing test for writing performance scores were the measures used prior and after the intervention to gather data for studying the impact of WS on WP. The intervention comprised orientation about the writing process and writing strategies followed by teacher- facilitated application of writing strategies on various academic writing tasks. The findings reveal explicit instruction helpful in teaching students WS which improved their WP. The study contributes to the limited empirical research about pedagogical intervention in second and academic writing in the context and the findings are significant for EAP teachers in similar settings to provide the much -needed academic support to the learners.

Evidence-based teaching of essay writing: Intervention at primary school

ABSTRACT Writing skills are important for educational achievement, employment and social and civic participation. This quasi-experimental study aimed to improve essay writing skills with an evidence-based intervention in two schools of mainstream P6 (grade 5) students (N = 44) in a largely rural local authority in Scotland. The intervention included peer revision of each other’s texts in a programme of writing strategy instruction and self-regulation. The control students (N = 46) followed an on-going parallel intervention. The experimental programme led to large positive effect sizes for writing quality. This was the first study in Scotland to investigate writing strategy instruction and self-regulation as part of an evidence-based intervention.

Self-Regulation in Early Writing Strategy Instruction

Experimental research on strategy instruction for beginning writers has only recently begun. This study investigated the role of self-regulation instruction in Grade 1 strategy learning. In a pretest-post-test quasi-experiment, 120 Grade 1 students participated in a unit of study on personal narrative in one of three conditions: (1) Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD), which included instruction in goal-setting, strategy steps, coping, self-monitoring, and self-reinforcement; (2) strategy instruction only (SO), which focused on the goal and steps of the strategy; (3) a control condition. Students in both strategy conditions, relative to the control, made large, statistically significant gains in text quality, word count, story features, and self-regulation knowledge. The SRSD condition resulted in greater self-regulation knowledge than the SO condition, which resulted in greater knowledge than the control. Pretest text quality did not interact significantly with condition. The effect of instruction on text quality was largely mediated by post-test self-regulation knowledge.

The effects of historical reading and writing strategy instruction with fourth- through sixth-grade students.

In this quasi-experimental study, 608 fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade students explored 5 historical investigations. In the experimental condition, teachers used a cognitive apprenticeship model to teach students historical reading and writing strategies. Comparison teachers used the same materials to deliver a business-as-usual form of instruction. Random assignment was at the individual level for fourth and fifth graders and at the classroom level for sixth graders. After controlling for gender, ethnicity, and pretest scores, the findings indicated that experimental students outperformed their peers in control classrooms on measures of essay length (ES = 0.25), holistic writing quality (ES = 0.59), and argumentative historical writing (ES = 0.67). Differences in students’ argumentative historical writing remained after six weeks (ES = 0.71). Finally, students with disabilities as well as those who did not meet annual reading proficiency benchmarks on state-administered assessments all benefited from experimental instruction. These results suggest that with appropriate supports and the opportunity to engage in meaningful historical content, students in fourth through sixth grade can analyze primary and secondary source documents and write evidence-based historical arguments. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)

Supplemental Material for The Effects of Historical Reading and Writing Strategy Instruction With Fourth- Through Sixth-Grade Students

Supplemental Material for The Effects of Historical Reading and Writing Strategy Instruction With Fourth- Through Sixth-Grade Students

The implementation of Cognitive Strategy Instruction in Writing (CSIW) strategy in teaching writing for the eight grade students at Mts Al-Karomah Winong Ngawi

Teaching and learning English in junior high school has the goal of focusing the students' ability to use English in every skill. One of the skills in this level is writing. Writing as one of four skills in language is a difficult one, especially for Junior High school. The purposes of the research are to describe the implementation of CSIW strategy, the advantages and the disadvantages in using CSIW strategy, and the students' response to implementation of CSIW strategy in teaching writing. The researcher offers CSIW strategy to solve those problems by improving the students' writing skills. The implementation of CSIW strategy in teaching writing for the eighth grade students at Mts Al-Karomah in the school year of 2015/2016 has three steps, they are pre-activity, whilst-activity, and post-activity. The results of implementing these three activities in class are the students become more directive in writing recount text, they show, the reason, how to write in their story well and the topic clearly. The students are also more active and concentrate on the learning process. Based on the result, it suggested that the teacher should use a strategy when they learn English especially in teaching writing. The students should make the draft/organization of written text before exploring it into their writing. It can help them to do exercise.

Teacher-Implemented Self-Regulated Strategy Development for Story Writing With 6-Year-Olds in a Whole-Class Setting in New Zealand

ABSTRACT Self-regulating strategy development (SRSD) writing instruction is an evidence-based approach that has been shown to increase students’ writing performance and knowledge of writing. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether early elementary students’ story writing performance and knowledge of writing would change following 5 weeks of SRSD writing strategy instruction implemented by their classroom teacher during the second of four terms, in a whole-class setting. Students’ (N = 17) stories at preintervention and postintervention were assessed for essential story components. Students also completed a writing knowledge questionnaire at preintervention and postintervention. Results showed that students’ writing performance and knowledge of writing improved after the intervention. The present study contributes to SRSD writing research by focusing on teacher-implemented whole-class instruction with 6-year-old students in New Zealand.

Teaching writing in primary education: Classroom practice, time, teachers’ beliefs and skills.

The aim of this study was to provide insight into the current practice of writing instruction in Dutch primary education, as a stepping stone for designing and implementing sustainable innovations that could satisfy both practitioners and policymakers. We investigated the extent to which three domain-specific approaches—communicative writing, process writing, and writing strategy instruction—and general features of high-quality instruction were implemented in writing lessons in the upper grades of primary schools. We also examined the learning time for writing, teachers’ views on writing and writing instruction, how efficacious they feel about teaching writing, and how skilled they are in the writing instruction domain. Lastly, we explored relations between classroom practices, learning time, and teachers’ beliefs and skills through correlation analysis, to identify potential aids and constraints to guide innovations in writing education. Participants were 61 teachers of 45 primary schools in the Netherlands. Data were collected through questionnaires, stimulated recall interviews and over 100 lesson observations. Results indicated that the three domain-specific approaches for writing instruction were insufficiently implemented in Dutch classrooms, as were differentiating and the teaching of learning strategies. The allocated learning time was also insufficient, but the realized learning time and the extent to which teachers promoted active learning were satisfactory, providing a strong basis for curricular improvement. Several relations were found between teachers’ classroom practices, learning time, and teachers’ beliefs and skills in the domain of writing instruction. Finally, we discuss options for sustainable innovations of writing instruction in this national context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)

Improving Non-English-Majored College Students’ Writing Skills: Combining a Know-Want-Learn Plus Model of Meta-Cognitive Writing Strategy Instruction and Internet-Based Language Laboratory Support

This paper reviewed a one-term experiment on integrating internet-based language laboratory (IBLL) in teaching writings kills with the know-want-learn (KWL) plus model to second-year non-English-majored college students from Yangtze University. Subjects in this study consisted of 92 non-English-majored college students in the control group (CG) and 91 non-English-majored college students in the experimental group (EG). The results showed that 1) compared with a teacher-dominated approach for CG, internet-based language laboratory with KWL plus model of meta-cognitive writing strategy instruction for EG did a better job in enhancing students’ writing skills; 2) there were significant differences between males in CG and EG, and females in CG and EG; 3) students in EG held the positive response for the combined instruction.

The effects of strategy-based writing instruction in Singapore primary schools

Abstract This study reports on a longitudinal intervention study of writing strategies in Singapore primary schools. The purpose of the study was to assess the impact of writing strategy instruction on Singapore primary school students' writing competence. Nine writing strategy-based lessons were taught to 442 primary five students. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses were performed to complement the possible inadequacy of either analytical method and for the purpose of data triangulation. The findings show that the intervention achieved a significant treatment effect on both the participants' writing competence and their strategy use, namely, text-generating, feedback handling, and revising. The qualitative analyses also suggest the experimental students orchestrated their strategy use better than before.

The effects of strategy instruction on writing strategy use for students of different proficiency levels

Abstract Learners' strategy use has been widely researched over the past few decades. However, studies which focus on the impact of strategy instruction on strategy use, and how far learners of different proficiency levels are able to use the strategies taught in an effective manner, are somewhat rare. The focus of this paper is the impact of writing strategy instruction on writing strategy use of a group of 12 s language learners learning to write in English for Academic Purposes classes. Stimulated recall was used to explore whether this impact differed according to the proficiency level of the students, and revealed that for both high and low proficiency learners' strategy use developed as a result of the instruction. The implications of these findings for strategy instruction design are discussed.