خلاصة:
Planning, monitoring, and evaluating one’s performance constitute individuals’ metacognitive strategies. Recently, metacognition has been conceptualized not only at the individual level but also at pair and group levels. The concept of socially-shared metacognition has arisen based on the idea that group members observe, control, evaluate, and regulate each other’s actions to promote the group’s problem-solving. This article investigated the impact of motivational scaffolds on a group of Iranian EFL learners’ individual and socially-shared metacognition. Two groups of 30 female intermediate learners participated in this study. In the experimental group, the participants received the teacher’s motivational scaffolds as she provided instructions and feedback throughout individual and collaborative oral and written tasks. On the other hand, the participants in the control group were asked to take part in the routine oral and written classroom activities. The participants’ think-aloud protocols in individual and pair activities were analyzed, and instances of metacognitive activities were identified. The data were analyzed through two Mann-Whitney U tests, and the results indicated that motivational scaffolds statistically significantly enhanced the use of metacognitive strategies at both inter and intra-individual levels. Implications for classrooms are discussed
ملخص الجهاز:
"Despite the prominent role of metacognitive skills in learning and knowledge acquisition (Wang, Haertel, & Walberg, 1990), and the theoretical links between motivation and metacognition (Efklides, 2011), to the best of our knowledge, no study has so far examined whether motivational scaffolding techniques can trigger the use of metacognitive strategies.
In an attempt to investigate the effectiveness of scaffolds in promoting metacognition and add to the still scarce body of research into the sociallymediated aspect of metacognition in writing, this study examined the role of motivational scaffolds on the individual and sociallyshared metacognitive activities among a cohort of Iranian English learners.
This study aims at answering the following two questions: 1) Do motivational scaffolds significantly increase the participants‘ use of metacognitive skills in individual writing tasks?
Thus, a MannWhitney U test was run to answer the first research question and to compare the two groups in terms of their gains with regard to the number of the instances of metacognitive strategies use in the individual writing tasks.
Language learning instructors are encouraged to implement collaborative writing tasks and pair/group oral activities along with the individual oral/written assignments in classrooms while presenting their feedback anchored in the affective needs of the learners and motivational factors affecting the learning process.
Further research can probe the effect of motivational scaffolds across various age and proficiency levels in female and male learners to provide a more comprehensive picture of the ways metacognitive strategies can be triggered through catering for affective factors."